Blue Blur Chronicles: Project Shadow
by Sir Nathan the Hedgehog
Summary: SA2 adaptation. Some original content. Eggman's latest try for world domination involves releasing Shadow, the self-professed Ultimate Life Form. Shadow's abilities match up well with Sonic's, but he reveals a hidden agenda that even shocks the doctor.
1. Prologue: Gerald's Journal

**Blue Blur Chronicles: Project Shadow**

By Sir Nathan the Hedgehog

DISCLAIMER: The basic plotline of the video game _Sonic Adventure 2_ and all of its characters belong to SEGA, Sonic Team, and all of their other respective owners.

Yes, this is essentially a written adaptation of SA2, although I have added a prologue and will try to fill in some of the gaps in the game's plot.

_Prologue: Gerald's Journal_

The live Presidential speech blared from the speakers of the large monitor in the dimly-lit room. Cold, cluttered, and soundless aside from the whirring of its numerous machines, the room was not being used for its usual purpose. Normally this room would be used as a laboratory or a research facility for bizarre and dangerous experiments, but today only the monitor was in use. And it was being watched intently by the large, mustached scientist that worked in the lab.

"_Today marks the one year anniversary of the greatest tragedy to ever occur on Central City's grounds. Last year, a monster caused destruction of catastrophic proportions by demolishing our buildings and flooding our streets while killing thousands in the process. Let us have a brief moment of silence for those lost."_

On a normal occasion, the large man would have scoffed at the notion of being asked to remain silent for men and women of such lower intellect than he himself, but he grudgingly joined everyone in the city in their silence. After all, he was largely responsible for unleashing the monster that had caused these deaths in the first place. After a few minutes, the moment of silence was over.

"_Thank you. Now, it is said that in times of turmoil, heroes arise. It is due to the efforts of these many heroes that we can say that we are able to stand amongst one another in this city once again. As bad as the destruction was, it most definitely would have meant the destruction of all that we have known without the efforts of all of the men and women who selflessly put their lives on the line for us. I would now like to take this opportunity to first thank the members of the Station Square Police Department, the Fire Department of Central City, and the emergency medical personnel at all of our city's hospitals for their tireless efforts at protecting, rescuing, and healing."_

This time, the large man wasted no time at expressing his disdain for the President and his speech. Had he forgotten that he, too, had attempted to bring down the monster? He had put a multi-billion dollar project on the line in an attempt to slay the beast. He understood that his efforts fell far short of their intended goal, but he felt that at least it was the most that anyone had done up until that point.

"_But I think we know who we must thank more than anyone else."_ The man felt his heart sink upon hearing this. _"These two put their lives right in the middle of the vicious beast's path." _The man continued to worry – they can't possibly be getting all of this credit while he gets ignored? _"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you, Central City's true heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles "Tails" Prower!"_

The man jumped at the monitor. There they were, his two sworn enemies stepping up to the podium in front of a worldwide broadcast. That cocky blue hedgehog with his cunning smile and his two-tailed fox-boy best friend. He had never hated them more in his life.

"_Sonic was able to counteract the superpowers of his nemesis with superpowers of his own, and then some. Certainly, his Super Sonic transformation proved to be no match for 'Perfect Chaos', as the beast has been dubbed. Also, we cannot forget the mastermind behind this plan for liberation. It was Tails who realized that the Chaos Emeralds that Perfect Chaos was using could be used against it by Sonic. Not only that, we cannot also forget that Tails diffused a terrorist attack by the criminal, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik which would have destroyed the city weeks before the monster attacked."_

Eggman now felt the color leave his face. All the hope that he had in him that maybe he would be forgiven of his past crimes had faded. He was on the run, but at least, in the past, when he was on the run, he would have something somewhere to fall back on. But he had exhausted virtually all of his resources in his battle with Perfect Chaos. He had been trying to recreate what had been the foundation for his world empire for the last year now with more authorities searching for him than ever before.

"_For your efforts, I would like to present to both of you keys to the city. And also, as something of a trophy for your victorious battle, I would like to present a Chaos Emerald as a final reward for you."_

Since Sonic had previously told the President that he would not accept any other gifts for his exploits, Tails was the one to accept the yellow Emerald and subsequently show it off to the crowd. Eggman just stared at him blankly.

"_The rebuilding process has been steady, and our city is starting to begin to look like its former self once again. The newly re-created Guardian Units of Nations, or G.U.N., filled with some of the finest men and women from all across the globe…"_

Eggman slammed the control panel in front of him before saying, "The last year has been a most embarrassing one. I have been foiled too many times by Sonic and his insolent friends."

He shut off the monitor, unable to watch any more of the president and his two mascots, and walked towards another room, his office. He sat at the desk near the back of the room and opened its middle drawer, pulling out an old, fraying journal. He had a page bookmarked and turned right to that page. After skimming through it, he looked up and whispered to himself, "The password is Maria…"

The mad doctor then fished through the same drawer again and pulled out his own trophy from the battle against Perfect Chaos: a glimmering silver Chaos Emerald.


	2. Chapter 1: Prison Island's Secret

_Chapter 1: Prison Island's Secret_

Dr. Eggman had waited a year for this moment: the moment where he would have his grandfather, Gerald's, most feared weapon in his arsenal.

After scouring through several of Gerald's journals, doing independent research, and hacking into government databases, Eggman had finally concluded that his next course of action would be to infiltrate G.U.N.'s new headquarters at Prison Island in order to get his hands on this weapon.

Eggman had considered infiltrating Prison Island covertly, but since he figured that he lacked the resources and the guile (he is a big man, after all) to sneak past authorities unnoticed, he came to decide that his only option would be to quickly break in by force. While he had spent the majority of the last year building robots, he for the most part commissioned them to defend his pyramid base or to construct weapons and vehicles. He decided that the time for his plan to commence had come in spite of the fact that he lacked his customary army of robots.

The doctor had studied the layout to the island's base several times as he flew to the island in his Eggmobile. He had upgraded the Eggmobile to give it the ability to transform into an Egg Walker with cannons and missile launchers attached. Upon landing on the island's airplane runway, Eggman made a run for the well-armored steel door that blocked him from the inside of the base.

"The fools don't even leave guards out in front of the gate," Eggman chuckled to himself. His missiles broke upon the door with relative ease.

"INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!" yelled a female voice over the base's P.A. system. "Security breach at Gate 3! All units prepare to engage!"

Sirens began to wail and several steel gates slid out from the walls and fortified themselves in front of Eggman's path. Not that they did any well. The doctor simply fired more missiles at these gates, causing the gates crumble as if he had just thrown a stone through a glass window.

"So, my grandfather's secret weapon is located further underground," Eggman mumbled to himself. He brought up the layout of the base on the monitor located in front of him in the Egg Walker and scanned it. Noting an area on the seventh floor which had seemingly nothing but blank space, the doctor decided that this would be his best bet as to the location of the weapon.

"Out of my way!" screamed the doctor as he encountered a few robot guards standing in front of another steel gate. He fired missiles at these guards as well, and they blasted into pieces. He then blasted through a gate with "LEVEL 1" printed on it, causing the voice over the P.A. to shout, "Assume emergency formations, security level one reached!"

"One down, six to go," thought Eggman in his head as he maneuvered the Walker through the base, destroying more and more guards as he went on. He moved into a small and enclosed room with three more G.U.N. guards in it – Eggman had them all destroyed before they could get shots off. The doctor noticed a camera in the room and looked and shouted at it in a pompous tone, "Is this it? These feeble chunks of metal?" before firing another missile at the camera itself.

The doctor headed toward a rising platform and used it to move upwards towards a different pathway. He followed this pathway into another enclosed room with guards, and these guards too fell victim to Eggman's might. The doctor then proceeded towards another tunnel, blasting through the gate with "LEVEL 2" printed on it. The woman over the P.A. system cried out again, almost desperately asking the guards to get into their positions.

Eggman proceeded towards a descending platform which would bring him towards the next tunnel. As he stepped onto the platform, however, a swarm of flying beetle shaped robots swooped towards him. These beetles, though, fell victim to the same fate as the humanoid robots, as they were smashed by one swift missile attack.

After reaching his destination, the doctor ran across the next pathway and blew through the "LEVEL 3" security gate, which again elicited a call of desperation from the P.A. announcer. As Eggman ran into this next room, he shot down three more beetle robots before they could get a chance to position themselves. The rooms were starting to look much more different and much more dangerous. The Egg Walker had to maneuver itself over a narrow catwalk as it proceeded in order to keep from falling into the abyss below. The doctor met two more human-shaped robots and disposed of them handily as he reached the end of the catwalk and entered a room more similar to those on the first two floors.

Eggman encountered a series of large descending steps and another catwalk which he breezed through briskly before barging through the "LEVEL 4" gate.

"Level four has been breached!" yelled the woman over the P.A. This time, she did not sound desperate. Rather, she sounded quite angry, which was understandable considering that these "state-of-the-art" G.U.N. robots were being taken to task easily by one person.

The doctor reached another descending lift on this level, and was greeted by more beetle robots. The lines of defense were getting no stronger, it seemed, as these beetles went down as easily as all of the others. He reached the bottom of the lift and made his way through another narrow passageway and crashed through the "LEVEL 5" gate.

"The level five security gate has been breached! Switch to emergency defense modes! Lock down the final gates!" the woman cried out, more alarmed than anything.

The doctor entered another larger, enclosed room and was swarmed by humanoid and beetle robots. The sheer number of machines surrounding him slowed him down some, but he still was able to escape the area unharmed. He broke through more gates and made his way past even more robots, but found his way blocked by a more secure gate than he had ever encountered up until that point.

Undeterred, the doctor smiled and said to himself, "This will be easy." He perched himself at a ledge a safe distance away and typed in a code into his Walker. The Walker began to groan more loudly than normal. A hole appeared in the middle of the Walker which showed sparks flying on the inside of the machine. Suddenly, an enormous rocket, much larger than anything that the doctor had fired in the base beforehand, shot right through this gate.

The doctor had made it. It was almost as if everyone else in the base had given up hope – the woman over the loudspeaker did not even acknowledge that the intruder had broken through the level 6 gate. The level 7 gate was relatively easy to get past after that; the doctor simply hacked through the gate's locking mechanism and entered the room.

"Oho!" the doctor exclaimed, almost squealing with delight. He had found a large room, probably big enough to comfortably fit a few hundred people. In the center of the room was a large console with several holographic projections emanating from it. Behind the console entered hundreds of long wires which stretched downwards into a deep pit. The doctor observed the projections on the console.

"Let's see, enter a user name…That would be G. Robotnik, my grandfather's name…Now enter a password…That would be...What was it again? Aha, now I remember, it's Maria…I saw that in his journal."

The console chirped in approval, but nothing had happened. Eggman moved his eyes over the console again and saw that there was not a sufficient source of power to free the project.

"Lucky I came prepared," boasted the doctor. From a compartment in his Egg Walker, he pulled out the silver Chaos Emerald that he had taken following the fight against Perfect Chaos the year before. He placed the Emerald into the console, which resulted in a rumbling from the pit behind the console. The doctor waited as a small cryogenic chamber rose from the pit. The doctor was anxious for a moment. Was this the weapon? It seemed too small to be that dangerous of a weapon. Robotnik moved over the chamber to free whatever was inside but was shocked to see it open on its own. Nothing could have prepared him for the shock that was upcoming.

"Sonic?" Eggman yelled out. Without hesitation, the doctor fired missiles at the silhouette of the hedgehog which had just come out of the chamber. The hedgehog eluded the missiles with relative ease, which seemed to confirm the doctor's suspicions: his arch nemesis had arrived to stop his nefarious plans.

"So is this it, then?" asked the hedgehog. The doctor was even more astounded at hearing the hedgehog's voice. This hedgehog could not be Sonic: his voice was deeper and more gruff, his fur was black with red streaks, and jets of light blasted from his shoes which appeared to be helping him hover over the ground. The hedgehog merely smiled at the doctor's attempt at attacking him. "So I'm being released just to be destroyed?"

Eggman could only watch the hedgehog in amazement. The hedgehog began to take a few steps towards the doctor when the two heard rumblings coming from the entrance of the room. These were heavy, mechanical rumblings, not unlike what would be expected from the Egg Walker's movement, although these sounds were much louder than that of the Egg Walker. Man had abandoned its robotic creations and had gone to take on its problems on its own.

"This is Scorpion Troop 'Hot Shot.' Ready to intercept and destroy," spoke the man inside the large walker. This machine probably doubled the doctor's Egg Walker in size and appeared to be equipped with much more dangerous weapons than the doctor's invention. It suddenly began to rise, showing its ability to fly and began to circle the doctor and the hedgehog about the room.

Assessing the situation and determining that Hot Shot would be the more dangerous of his two problems, the black hedgehog prepared to storm off to confront the G.U.N. unit before proclaiming to the doctor, "Prepare to witness my true power!"

Hot Shot began to target the hedgehog, pointing a bright red light at it. The laser cannon on the front of the machine began to glow a bright white color. However, the man in the cockpit had not anticipated the hedgehog's speed as it dashed in his direction. The hedgehog then leapt onto a stack of crates near the machine and then jumped off of those to launch a powerful Homing Attack at the machine's cockpit. The attack was enough to rattle the machine to a considerable extent.

"The parallels between this hedgehog and Sonic are remarkable," said Eggman to himself, stowed away in a corner and not attracting any attention. The doctor had witnessed a similar attack on several occasions by his blue hedgehog nemesis. Hot Shot had not attempted to move from its current position, and instead attempt to retarget the hedgehog. The hedgehog merely responded by leaping on to the same stack of crates and delivering another Homing Attack to the machine's cockpit.

There was no boasting or celebration coming from the hedgehog, nor was their any fear. In fact, he showed almost no emotion at all. Hot Shot then began to move again, circling around the room. The hedgehog, though, proved to be much faster than the machine and cut in front of it, once again using a stack of crates to elevate himself and attack the machine's cockpit. Now, Hot Shot was smoking and appeared to be on its last legs.

"The enemy is stronger than expected!" yelled the machine's pilot frantically. "Requesting additional backup!" Hot Shot had lost its ability to fly and had landed several feet away from its target. The hedgehog had allowed himself a moment to catch his breath, as he had appeared winded. Perhaps he was unused to all of this activity after all those years trapped in the cryogenic chamber. The machine began to groan and was smoking. Rocket launchers, perched above the cockpit, started to open and showed four slots on each launcher for rockets to shoot out of.

The hedgehog then began to charge towards the machine, which responded by firing rockets at it from all directions. The agile hedgehog, though, seemed to just side-step these attacks without losing any speed and eventually got close enough to launch another Homing Attack at the machine's cockpit, finally breaking through and knocking its pilot out unconscious. The hedgehog landed down to the ground in front of Hot Shot and watched as it crumbled down in front of him.

"What a show!" screamed the doctor delightedly, a good distance from all the action. The hedgehog had not even turned to glance at him. "You said you would show me your true power, and that you did! This is amazing, you are exactly what I am looking for!"

The hedgehog suddenly darted over at miraculous speeds, which Robotnik would have marveled at even more had the hedgehog not proceeded to jump onto the Walker and grab at the doctor's shirt.

"You are a strange man, you!" growled the hedgehog threateningly. "You free me, then try to kill me, only to applaud me afterwards. If you think this just some kind of game, I'd be more than happy to do to you what I just did to the last human that threatened my existence."

"No, no, you've got it all wrong!" remarked the doctor, trying to smile and look friendly. "I came here to rescue you. You are the Ultimate Life Form I have been reading about." If the hedgehog was affected at all by being acknowledged as being the Ultimate Life Form, he did not show it. "I have read about you. You were created by my grandfather, Gerald, for Project Shadow."

This time, the hedgehog turned his head to the side upon hearing this name. "Yes, Professor Gerald was my creator. And you say he is your grandfather?" The doctor nodded. "Then this makes more sense. You have surely come with good intentions. You may have just attempted to kill me, but I will let that go. I'm sure that was just a misunderstanding…right?" The doctor nodded again, this time nervously.

"My name is Shadow. I am the Ultimate Life Form. For releasing me, …master," Shadow started with some difficulty, "I am bound to your service and will do anything that you wish."

The doctor smiled diabolically. "What do you mean, 'anything I wish'?"

Shadow had turned and had begun to walk towards the exit. He stopped and slightly turned at towards to doctor, saying, "Just bring me Chaos Emeralds."

"Chaos Emeralds?" Eggman asked in shock, as if he had never heard of them before.

"Yes, Chaos Emeralds," responded Shadow patiently. "You can find me on the Space Colony ARK."

"ARK?" the doctor screamed, this time angrily. The space colony had been shut down for the last 50 years. It seemed an impossibility to get onboard.

The hedgehog, however, merely made his way toward the exit, without any further explanation. Eggman struck the front of his Walker in frustration. He had found what he was looking for, only for it to get up and abandon him. He had assumed this would be the easy part in establishing his world empire. Instead, he had much more work left in front of him. Not only did he have to find a way to board a satellite in outer space, he had to find the objects that helped to subject him to his downfall a year ago. He returned to the console in the room to retrieve the silver Chaos Emerald.

"One down, six to go," he sighed and made his way back towards the exit.


	3. Chapter 2: The Hero's Arrest

_Chapter 2: The Hero's Arrest_

Life was good for Sonic the Hedgehog. There he sat in his favorite hot dog joint eating his usual chili dog. This city loved him. In the past year, he had been asked to guest in over 100 talk shows, was flooded with hundreds of endorsement requests, and was even asked to have a cameo appearance in the upcoming movie, _Planet of the Chaos_, which was based on his battle with Perfect Chaos the year before. Sonic figured, though, that the best reward that he could have received was just rest and relaxation. So he decided not to take on any of these requests, save for appearing on a technology-oriented show with Tails (not that Sonic knew anything that they were talking about on the show) and with Tails and the President on the one-year anniversary of the Perfect Chaos attacks.

Sonic and Tails had not hung around with each other much since Perfect Chaos' power was neutralized. While Sonic had preferred to sit around and relax, Tails had gone straight back to work at his workshop in the Mystic Ruins. Even after they had met with the President on international television, they immediately went their separate ways. Sonic had a letter that Tails had sent a little while after this. He always wondered why Tails still hand-wrote letters, especially considering his prowess with modern technology. Sonic started to read the letter at his table at the hot dog restaurant.

_Dear Sonic,_

_Got back to the lab a little earlier today. Just finished up the final version of the Tornado 3. You're gonna love it! I'm not gonna bore you with any of the more specific details. You can deny it all you want, but I know you get all cranky when I talk tech with you haha. I based it off Egghead's Egg Walker thing that I (cough-cough) destroyed last year. I swear you're gonna love it! It's got rockets and missiles and cannons and all that fun stuff. Can't wait to try it out for real, and that time might be coming soon! The Prison Island base got broken into, as you probably have already heard. Eggman has to be behind it. He's the only person capable of doing such a thing. We can talk all about it when we meet up again, which might be soon if Eggy makes a move quickly._

_Cordially,_

_Miles "Tails" Prower_

_P.S.: Are you going to Knuckles' ritual thing out in the desert? I'm not, I was never very interested in all that ancient Echidna stuff. :)_

He chuckled to himself after reading the postscript. Knuckles invited him to participate in ancient echidna rituals every six months or so, but he always found convenient excuses to not go. And of course, it didn't hurt that the echidna would believe anything he said. Amy would probably be there, he thought to himself, so at least he would have some company.

By the time Sonic had received the letter, news of the break-in at Prison Island was a few days old. Things had been quiet in terms of any evildoing then. "Who could have been behind that?" Sonic sarcastically asked himself while rolling his eyes, the first time he heard the news. Today, he found himself interested in a news report playing from the TV at the hot dog place, as further developments were being made in the investigation of the break-in.

"It has now been confirmed that the perpetrator was able to make his way down into the lowest level of the underground base, where he was able to successfully hack his way through one of the more intricately secure rooms in the base," said a voice from the television. "It was confirmed that something was missing from the room following the break-in, but G.U.N. officials would not confirm what it was.

"One man, who had been piloting a newly-introduced combat vehicle created by G.U.N., went into this room to confront the perpetrator. He was knocked unconscious during this confrontation, however, and does not remember any of the event. Although no official statement has been made on this matter, several public officials have singled out the criminal, Dr. Ivo Robotnik, as the perpetrator." Upon hearing this, Sonic wondered why it took these officials days to realize it.

Another man looking gravely concerned then appeared on the television screen. Sonic recognized him immediately as the President. "We have received intelligence that the likely suspect of this break-in is none other than the criminal responsible for planning the Perfect Chaos attacks, Dr. Ivo 'Eggman' Robotnik. The methods carried out by the suspect in this case, in many ways, are identical to Robotnik's methods. The suspect in this case had to have been well-versed with technology, and as we know, Robotnik is a genius with machinery and warfare. We cannot yet be 100% sure of the suspect's identity, but most signs point towards Robotnik."

Sonic was perplexed at this last statement. "If we are so sure that these 'methods' used by the suspect look like, feel like, and smell like something Eggman would do, why aren't we sure yet that it was him?" he asked himself.

The President then added on the TV, "One of the things that has baffled us throughout the investigation is that the suspect would have likely needed a Chaos Emerald to get to what he wanted to get. We cannot entirely be sure that Robotnik currently possesses a Chaos Emerald."

Sonic was incredulous at this, especially since it was coming from the President himself. The last time they had met, the President had confided in him and Tails that of the seven Chaos Emeralds, the government only knew the locations of six of them. Three were stored in Prison Island, one was being held by a "close associate", another was being held at the federal reserve bank in Central City, and the sixth was being given to Tails later that day. Although Sonic and Tails did not point this out to the President that day, they both figured that Eggman had the seventh Chaos Emerald, as they figured that he would have been the first one to search for Emeralds following Sonic's fight with Chaos. If the government didn't know where the seventh Emerald was, why would it be so difficult to assume that Eggman had it?

Sonic, now agitated, decided to leave the restaurant. He didn't consider politics or government to be one of his greater interests, but this time he could not ignore the obvious flaws in the government's thinking.

Just then, though, three uniformed soldiers walked into the restaurant and approached Sonic as he was trying to leave. Quickly glancing over the logos on their uniforms, Sonic saw that they were G.U.N. soldiers.

"Sonic the Hedgehog, you're going to need to come with us," said the soldier in the middle of the group. He was threatening in tone. Sonic was confused more than anything.

"Come with you? What's the matter?" asked Sonic. He initially figured that they probably needed him to solve some crime-related matter, but no law-enforcement or military member had ever approached him directly like this before. He usually just showed up just in time to save the day. But even if someone had approached him before, he would never have expected that person to be in the mood that these G.U.N. soldiers were in.

"You're being taken in. Don't tell me you've forgotten what you've done today?" the soldier in the middle asked. Sonic thought about what he had done all day in his head. He woke up, ate breakfast, watched TV, didn't want to make lunch, and then ended up here eating chili dogs. Nothing incriminating about that.

"Listen, there must be some kind of mistake, I haven't done anything wrong today. I mean, other than being a walking and talking blue hedgehog, right?" he said, trying to get the soldiers to laugh. They weren't amused.

"All right, guys, we're gonna have to take him in by force," the soldier in the middle told his comrades. The two other soldiers then moved towards Sonic – they were much larger and much more intimidating than the third soldier. Although Sonic could have escaped them easily, he decided to comply. There was no need to cause a scene, and since he knew he was innocent, he would be in the clear in no time. However, he was taken aback when one of the two larger soldiers handcuffed him.

"Search him," the third soldier told his two associates.

"Um, captain?" asked one of them. His voice seemed slightly high-pitched for a man of his size.

"What?"

"He's not wearing any clothes, so…what are we supposed to search?"

The captain was astonished, as he realized this to be the truth. Since he figured they had to do something, he told them to check Sonic's shoes.

"Uh, cap?" asked the other of the larger soldiers. His voice seemed more appropriate for someone of his size. "Do you really think he could have fit the thing into his shoes?" The captain thought about this. "I mean, I don't want to be the one to have to take off Sonic the Hedgehog's trademark shoes, you know?"

The captain took this into consideration as well. "Uh, okay, well, uh – jeez, what do we do now?" he asked.

"Maybe we should take him to the helicopter now," the big soldier with the normal-sounding voice said.

"Helicopter?" Sonic asked, wondering what he could have done to deserve this fate.

"Right, the helicopter! Let's go, boys!" the captain commanded. The other two exchanged looks of bewilderment at their captain's bout with indecision, but complied and brought Sonic with them outside the shop. They didn't walk far down this street before entering a skyscraper. They took an elevator inside the lobby of this building all the way to the top, where the helipad would be located. The trip in the elevator made Sonic very uncomfortable. Thoughts raced around in his mind as he wondered why he was in this situation and why these military operatives wanted him so much. He was also just searched. He didn't have anything dangerous on him. Why would they think that he had anything dangerous on him?

Finally, the elevator stopped at the roof of the building where the chopper was located. Sonic was taken to the back part of the helicopter and was placed in a holding cell with an enormous purple cat holding a small frog. The soldier with the high-pitched voice closed the cell and seated himself across from it. It appeared that the other two soldiers were in the cockpit.

"Mr. Sonic?" the purple cat called out, as the hedgehog tried to take a seat. Sonic began to recognize him.

"Oh, hey, you're that cat dude again!" Sonic called out. "You're Big, right? I mean, I know you're big, but that's your name, though, uh…right?" he asked awkwardly, but Big seemed to be pleased with this attempt at a joke. The helicopter then began to whir and it took off.

"I still can't believe he would do something like this," said the soldier seated near the holding cell, as if the cat and the hedgehog weren't within earshot of him. "I mean, rob a bank? And not only that, the federal reserve bank? What would Sonic the Hedgehog need at the federal reserve bank?" Sonic was shocked at hearing this. Now he had some idea of why he was being captured. Surely, though, they knew that it couldn't have been him. They were only taking him in as a precaution, Sonic assured himself.

"Let me see those photos again," said the nearby soldier. A hand then reached in from the front of the helicopter and it dropped a few sheets of paper in the back compartment. One of the sheets flew close to the back of the compartment, near the holding cell. Sonic could see it clearly. There was a hedgehog in the picture labeled "Sonic the Hedgehog", but it was not him. It all started to make sense to him now. They had confused him for some impostor hedgehog. This hedgehog didn't even look like him, Sonic thought. The picture was in black-and-white, but Sonic could still make out the streaks in this hedgehog's hair. The hedgehog also appeared as if it were ice skating on solid ground. He could never pull something like that off even if he tried. It dawned upon Sonic that this could be potentially incriminating evidence and realized that G.U.N. was more likely to keep someone innocent locked up for a long period of time than to let someone potentially guilty walk free.

Sonic looked at the cat inside the cell with him, and then looked at the frog now perched on his lap. "Hey Big," he called out. "Look outside the window, there's a cloud shaped like your frog." Big took the bait and Sonic walked over and kicked the frog off of Big's lap, causing it to fly through the bars of the cell and land at the feet of the nearby soldier.

"Oh, God, the frog!" the soldier yelled and fell off of his seat, trying to get away from it. The frog started to hop towards the soldier and the soldier fearfully crawled from one side of the helicopter to another, trying to avoid it. Sonic took this opportunity to pull off a quill from his back. He then used the quill to pick the lock to one of the hands on his handcuffs. With his hands freed, he then made a move to the cell door and picked that lock as well.

The large soldier with the normal voice turned to look at the commotion and saw Sonic as he made a move towards the side door. "The suspect's making a run for it!" he yelled. Sonic didn't hesitate in taking his golden opportunity, and barged through the door, landing on top of one of the side wings of the chopper.

"The advantages of being a hedgehog," Sonic said gleefully to himself. He picked the lock to the cuff on his other hand and pulled off a strip of loose metal in the shape of a snowboard from the wing. He looked back at the door from which he had just escaped to see Big looking out of it. "See ya later, bro! Thank the frog for me!" With this, Sonic leapt from the helicopter towards the city below him.

He felt the wind whipping around his ears as he fell to what would be a sure death for a normal mammal. However, this was Sonic, who had survived falls from the Tornado and the Egg Carrier in the past year or so, and in addition, he had the snowboard-shaped strip of metal to aid him. He fell closer and closer to the ground, and when he got close enough, he positioned himself on the metal strip as if it actually were a snowboard. He landed with the snowboard on a downward sloping street and zoomed down the busy street. He might have been nervous going down this hill had he not also been an expert boarder or had he been incapable of running at the speed at which he was currently moving. He moved down street after street until finally he came to a construction roadblock. He dismounted from the strip of metal and was able to dive under and squeeze himself just under the roadblock. He found himself lying facedown on some pavement.

"Well, that's enough fun for one day," Sonic muttered to himself. He started to dust himself off when he suddenly heard more rumbling behind him. He turned around. It was a truck, but not just a truck. It was a huge truck. And it was coming right at him with no intention of stopping. Sonic could barely make out "G.U.N." on the front of the truck.

He turned and ran down the street in the opposite direction of the truck. The truck was so wide that it literally took up the entire street. It crashed straight through cars parked on both sides of the road, but was traveling so forcefully that it would not slow down. The hedgehog and the truck were both moving as fast as they could down the road in front of them. They came to a corner on the street and Sonic was able to make his way around it quite gracefully. Given the narrowness of the street, the truck could barely squeeze its way around the corner, but it made it out unharmed. Sonic began to Spin Dash to try and gain more speed as the truck approached. He saw a short tunnel coming up ahead of him – he knew there would be no chance of the truck making it through. He could feel the truck getting closer and closer…

After what seemed like a lifetime, Sonic made it through the tunnel. There was a huge crash behind him as he went through as the truck slammed itself to a stop into the tunnel. Sonic then made his way to the end of the street where he found a fence. He leapt over the fence onto a grassy knoll, and stopped. He looked around in each direction to make sure he was no longer being followed and then fell to the ground, exhausted.

He probably should have been thinking about the fact that he was just arrested, that he escaped capture, and just avoided becoming roadkill. But as Sonic laid on the grass he found himself only thinking one thing: Who was that other hedgehog?


	4. Chapter 3: The ME and the Hidden Base

_Chapter 3: The Master Emerald and the Pyramid Base_

She flew across the desert, hearing distinct pings in her earpiece. The pings were starting to get faster than she had ever heard before. All of her efforts up until this point: the research, the training, asking favors, returning favors, the Chaos Emerald from the President...they were all going to pay off this time. In a big way.

Rouge the Bat wasn't supposed to have the earpiece, which worked as a kind of sonar device. That was reserved for her more tenured and more experienced fellow government agents. But if the woman in charge of safeguarding all of G.U.N.'s new technology wanted to get revenge on her cheating husband, should Rouge have just ignored her? If the woman wanted to reward her for this favor by letting her take any device that she wanted, was she wrong to accept? No and absolutely not.

Rouge had her earpiece linked to the ancient energy that her blue Chaos Emerald radiated. She had learned from her studies over the years that all seven Chaos Emeralds and the Master Emerald are somehow linked to one another, so she had her earpiece programmed to have pings sound as she got closer to one of her targets. The pings would sound faster as she got closer to her target. Her target this time was the Master Emerald.

Soon the pings started to come at an extraordinarily fast rate, and Rouge knew that she had reached her destination. She powered down her earpiece and touched down on a sandy stone structure behind some stone pillars and looked out for the Emerald. However, what she ended up finding was not the Emerald, but a red echidna and a pink hedgehog.

Knuckles was known to leave his home, Angel Island, every six months to celebrate ancient echidna traditions. Since trips to mainland Earth were relatively rare for him, he always invited his friends, Sonic, Tails, and Amy to the proceedings. However, it seemed like every time after the first time he invited the two guys to come, he was just setting himself up for disappointment. The only time they had come, it was made extremely obvious that they were highly uncomfortable with the rock climbing, rock smashing, digging with their bare hands, the meditating, and all of the other echidna traditions. They're not echidnas, so they don't understand, Knuckles rationalized. It didn't explain why Amy came every time, though, and he sure was thankful she provided him with some company.

Amy was genuinely glad to accompany Knuckles on these trips to the desert. Although she could not keep up with him just based on the fact that she was not as experienced with the rituals, she still sincerely had fun. It was also thanks to her that Sonic and Tails were able to get away with not showing up, as Amy would relay some kind of excuse to Knuckles as to why they couldn't come. This time, Sonic was being bogged down by some newspaper reporter and Tails was attending some airplane convention. To no one's surprise, Knuckles believed in these weak excuses. Amy was more than glad to do this for the guy she had always loved, but of course, on the inside, she wished that Sonic was there with her. _He would come just to spend time with me_, Amy imagined.

At that particular point, Knuckles began a tai chi-styled exercise, and Amy tried to imitate him as much as she could. Unbeknownst to him, Rouge looked on. "I know what my purpose is in life…" said Knuckles in monotone, closing his eyes. "This purpose has been bestowed on me from my ancestors…I must guard the Master Emerald with all my might…HI-YAH!" he screamed as he punched at thin air. "HI-YAH! HI-YAH!" he continued to yell out in a high-pitched voice while throwing his fists at nothing. Amy could not help but giggle at this, and neither could Rouge from her hiding spot.

"C'mon, that can't be legit ancient echidna stuff," Amy said to Knuckles.

Then, just as suddenly as he began his imaginary fight, Knuckles paused. "Of course it's legit, now c'mon and try it. I am the last descendent of a noble race…" he continued in the same drawling voice. "My job is to protect the Emerald, which protects me and all others in ways that we cannot understand…HI-YAH! HI-YAH! HI-YAH!" Just like that, the echidna started again, this time his voice more ridiculous than before. He continued his rampage against his invisible opponent, much to Rouge's delight. Amy wasn't laughing, but stared and smiled. As he didn't stop, Rouge couldn't stop laughing. Finally, it came to a point where Rouge began to laugh so hysterically, Knuckles realized that he and Amy were not alone. He stopped and looked in Rouge's direction. By then, she had fallen to the ground, unable to control her laughter.

"Uh –" Knuckles began awkwardly. "Who are you?"

Rouge tried to control herself, but still had to stifle some laughter when she said, "That was, ha ha, probably the most, heh, funny thing I have EVER seen!" She went on laughing some more.

Blushing and clearly embarrassed, Knuckles looked at Amy for support, but she just shrugged and turned to face behind her. Finally, Rouge tried to control herself again to say something else.

"HI-YAH! HI-YAH!" she screeched, imitating Knuckles punching at nothing before returning to her laughter.

"Hey, you don't understand, that's ancient echidna technique you're making fun of," Knuckles tried to respond. But he wasn't assertive enough as she barely noticed him, and she simply decided to keep laughing her head off. When he deemed that trying to control her would be a lost cause, Knuckles decided to move on with his celebrations. "C'mon Amy, let's continue," he called out to the hedgehog, and she obliged. He pulled out a small jewel from the inside of his glove and moved it close to his face. He began to mumble some kind of rite towards it. Rouge noticed and began to look his way.

"Oh, oh, what's he doing now?" Rouge called out to him mockingly. When she finally did see what he was doing, she went silent. The jewel that Knuckles had pulled from his glove was the Master Emerald in a shrunken form. He had been speaking a rite to make grow so that it ended up being about his height.

"Hey, that's the Master Emerald!" Rouge called out accidentally. She covered her mouth after saying this, as she didn't intend on exposing anything about her plans for the Emerald.

Knuckles shot a look at her, clearly suspicious of her intentions. "Yes, this is the Master Emerald. What's that to you?"

Reacting quickly, Rouge responded, "It's nothing, it's just, y'know, I've heard so much about it and now it's right here in front of me."

Despite the fact that he was unconvinced, Knuckles decided to do nothing about the bat and urged Amy to come with him and sit in front of the Emerald to meditate, eyes closed again. Rouge then began to inch in the direction of the Emerald. She was unsure of what she was going to do next, but she decided that it couldn't hurt to at least get a closer look.

She was able to advance about halfway between her spot behind the pillars and the Emerald when Amy peeked behind her and noticed her. She nudged Knuckles on the arm, and he sprang up to his feet and sprinted towards Rouge, grabbing her by the shoulders.

"I knew it! You're trying to steal the Emerald, aren't you?" he bellowed.

She giggled. "Oh, really? How long did it take you to figure that out?" she responded calmly.

"Don't insult my intelligence! I have been guarding that thing for too long to not know when someone's out to steal it!"

"Really? So you know what's going on with the Emerald at all times?"

"Of course!"

"Knuckles! Knuckles, we have a problem!" Amy called out. Knuckles turned around and could only gasp. A metal claw had seemingly popped out from the sky and had grabbed hold of the Emerald, lifting it from the ground. Knuckles, Amy, and Rouge all followed the claw with their eyes as it returned to its source, the Eggmobile.

"Oh, hello there, Knucklehead! And uh…females," said Eggman with a smile.

"Eggman! You again?" Knuckles called out.

"Don't call me that!" the doctor snapped.

"Eggman? What are you doing here?" Amy asked him.

"I'm telling you, don't call me that!" Eggman called back.

"So that's Dr. Eggman," said Rouge casually. "I've heard so much about you," she called out to the doctor.

Eggman looked furious. "No! Look now, you rapscallions, now she's calling me that!"

"…Rapscallions? If I thought that were a joke, I _might_ have laughed." Knuckles retorted.

Eggman gave an irritated grunt from up above. "Anyway, I was using my Chaos Emerald here," he began, flashing his silver Emerald, "and picked up the trail to this Emerald…except this is the Master Emerald. It's not quite what I was looking for, but it should serve me some purpose," he said smiling, clearly very pleased with himself. Hearing how the doctor had discovered the Emerald's location irritated Knuckles, who was born with ability to track down Emeralds and despised technologies that could do what he felt only he should be able to do. If only he knew how Rouge had found the Master Emerald.

"You have a Chaos Emerald?" wondered Amy aloud. "Oh my gosh, then it must have been you! You broke into Prison Island!"

The doctor glanced over at her. "Well, of course it was me! Who else could have made his way past those pathetic G.U.N. troops so easily?"

Rouge, being a government agent, took this as a confession. This would be the discovery of a lifetime, she thought to herself. She'd be climbing in agent status in no time.

"Until we meet again, you three!" Eggman called out, moving the Eggmobile in the opposite direction that he faced.

"Uh oh," Knuckles said to himself with a hint of desperation. "There's only one thing to do – get out of my way!" He yelled, pushing Rouge, who was right next to him, off to the side as he leapt up and glided upwards towards the Emerald. He clenched his fist and gave a powerful punch to the Emerald…causing it to shatter.

As Knuckles and Eggman had witnessed the previous year, the Emerald broke into shards which flew off in every direction. Most of them had traveled distances disproportional to the force at which it was hit.

Knuckles landed to the ground, with no pieces of the Emerald in sight. Amy had started to scream when she heard the crash. Eggman looked shaken from the impact that Knuckles made. Rouge, meanwhile, was irate, and grabbed Knuckles in fury.

"What have you done?" she screamed at him furiously. "You broke it! You broke it, it's ruined! That was going to be my most prized possession, how could you?"

He managed to push her off of him. "Ruined? No, not ruined," he replied. "I've seen it before, the Master Emerald has powers that will allow it to restore itself as long as I find all of those lost shards. If I find the shards, the Master Emerald will be whole and _mine_ again, not yours."

"Or I could find the pieces, and _I_ could restore it…" Rouge said, grinning. Knuckles scowled at this and started to head off in a random direction.

"Don't you dare go after them! I'll find you!" Knuckles threatened as he walked away.

"Oh, I'll be waiting," Rouge said and winked at him. He might have responded to it had he not been so angry. Rouge looked around her: Knuckles had just stormed off, Amy ran in a completely different direction screaming something about "telling Sonic", and Eggman was headed in another direction, towards a pyramid. He had tried to sneak off without being noticed. Rouge made note of where he had headed, and then turned her earpiece back on and listened for pings again.

* * *

"Well, that didn't go as planned," Robotnik mumbled to himself. "Doesn't matter now, I need to retake my desert base and find a way onto the ARK."

All of Dr. Robotnik's known hideouts were currently being watched by G.U.N., and the pyramid base was no exception. However, the doctor was banking on the off-chance that G.U.N. had not found or even attempted to find the entrance to the base. The doctor had designed the outer portions of his territory to act as a maze and a trap. If anybody had ever tried to infiltrate the base, they would most likely get lost. Or at the very least, they would fall to their deaths in the quicksand that he had spread all across the territory.

Eggman had switched out of Eggmobile mode and into Walker mode, and used the Walker to get across various moving platforms while taking the time to shoot down the many G.U.N. beetles that he encountered. The doctor also soon became acquainted with the new G.U.N. hawks and rhinos that were now trying to intercept him. They appeared to be much stronger than the beetle and human-shaped robots, but they were just as ineffective against Eggman's attacks.

It became obvious to the doctor that G.U.N. had indeed attempted to infiltrate his base judging by the makeshift blockades scattered throughout the area. These blockades, though, were basically non-issues, as Eggman's missiles made quick work of them. As the doctor progressed, he noticed fewer and fewer active G.U.N. robots on the loose, which seemed to confirm that they were not surviving his maze defenses. However, he also came to realize that all of the traps that they had set off had left him with almost no room for error in terms of traveling towards the entrance. He noticed that many of the explosions triggered by trap mechanisms had unwittingly destroyed solid ground. In many scenarios, Eggman was forced to blow up pillars and other nearby solid objects to create new ground to walk on.

The doctor had passed through about 90% of the maze with pretty much no problem when he came to an ambush point. He got to a chamber filled with G.U.N. robots which had no idea how to carry on from that point. For a change, Robotnik was actually being hit my enemy fire, although his Walker's defenses did not seem to be weakening to a great extent.

Prepared for such a scenario, Eggman decided to use the most powerful attack he had equipped his Egg Walker. "Let's see how much of this you can handle!" he yelled to the machines.

A large beam of energy then started to shoot out of the front of the Walker, obliterating all the robots in its path. The attack had left basically nothing moving in the chamber, but it was at great expense to the Walker's energy – it was barely moving too. "The Power Laser seems to have come out all right," he said. "It's left the energy levels low, but at least I know it can accomplish what I need it to."

Eggman struggled to get the Walker in position to proceed. What the robots could not figure out was that there was a marking near one of the far corners of the chamber shaped like a face. Eggman pushed this marking and the ground beneath him was revealed to actually be a lift which brought him up towards the tunnel that would bring him to the inside of the base.

The doctor followed the tunnel and made his way to his computer room. He brought up a map of the perimeter on the monitor in front of him. He had mostly cleared the outside of G.U.N. forces, but not all of them. "They might be useful if I need to keep out any other unwelcome guests," the doctor figured. There were no G.U.N. units inside the perimeter, much to his relief.

He got off of his Walker and placed it in a corner of the computer room to undergo repairs. He then switched to monitor to television mode where a live news report was on.

"…_After having escaped capture once already today, Sonic the Hedgehog appears to have been cornered by G.U.N. units on the Radical Highway Bridge. The world-renowned hero, seen there in the middle of the screen, is suspected to have robbed the federal reserve bank at around noon today, and has situated himself at very top of the bridge as military troops begin to block off any potential exits."_

The camera closed in on the hedgehog in question. The doctor snickered. It seemed that he was the only one who knew the true identity of this hedgehog.

"That Shadow is a clever one," Eggman said to himself. The pair now had two Chaos Emeralds in their possession.


	5. Chapter 4: Maria's Wish

_Chapter 4: Maria's Wish_

The last week or so had been busy for Shadow the Hedgehog. After being freed from Prison Island, the black hedgehog stowed away on a battleship making its way from the island to the shores of Station Square. It was 50 years since he was last walking, feeling, living. And yet he knew immediately where he had to go. The district of Station Square, a section of Central City that beautifully mixed urban and natural qualities, was a place that Shadow had never been before. And yet being there felt so natural.

He had sat on the beaches for some time staring at Earth around him. He had only seen it from space. He never would have found this beach or the sun just before noontime on the ARK. As he watched, Shadow pondered beginning his search for the Chaos Emeralds, but unfortunately for him, he had no idea where any would be.

He then started to walk along the city's streets, the creations of mankind. He did not appreciate these as much as he did the natural qualities of the Earth. He could barely make out the sun as the tall skyscrapers were blocking the way, and the air was filled with exhaust from all the cars. The people on the streets did not seem to pay him any mind, either. They seemed almost robotic as they walked straight ahead, eyes fixated far ahead of them, and talked on their cell phones.

It didn't take Shadow long to figure out where one of the Chaos Emeralds would have been hidden. It was when he stumbled upon by far the biggest and most fortified of all of the buildings in the city that he just knew there had to be a Chaos Emerald inside. The building, although obviously not newly built, at least seemed renovated, and its additions appeared to contain something of the utmost importance. He had come across the federal reserve bank.

He began to hate his plan for infiltrating the bank the minute he carried it out. He scaled the side of the building, eventually making his way to the roof and breaking his way into the building's ventilation system by busting through a vent of a ventilation duct. The duct was cramped – a human for sure could not have squeezed through it. Shadow was just able to sneak by.

He made his way into the Chaos Emerald's room and saw it set on a pedestal in the room's center, the pedestal being set on a red carpet. The Emerald was bright green, and it shone in the light. The sides of the room were covered with safes running up the entire height of the walls and seemingly had their contents more well-protected than the Chaos Emerald was. Shadow rushed over and pulled the Emerald off of the pedestal, with horrible consequences. Alarms wailed and the entire bank became privy to his break-in. The bank's guards began to rush in to meet the burglar, but the Ultimate Life Form proved too powerful for them. He escaped the bank through its regular entrance and had been fleeing from authorities from day until night.

Shadow now found himself on one of the towers of the Radical Highway Bridge. The Bridge was heavily damaged after Chaos destroyed the city and, a year later, was still undergoing maintenance. He stared down at the police cars now crowding at the base of the tower. A helicopter had also joined the action.

"Well, isn't this pathetic!" said Shadow with a hint of glee in his voice as he watched this crowd of police cars grow. He had started to feel fatigued with all of the escaping he had been doing all day. He watched the flashing red lights from the cruisers below, which suddenly turned into red lights flashing elsewhere. The sirens from the cars were now changing into a security alarm blaring. He was running, and he was terrified.

* * *

_They didn't know where they were going. They only knew that they had to run._

_Shadow gripped Maria's hand. He knew he could run much faster than this, but that would mean abandoning Maria, his best and only friend. His grip on her hand tightened with every step as the two frantically searched for a place to hide._

"_Find them, they're about to escape!" echoed a screaming voice behind them in the hallway. Shadow tried to speed up._

"_I can't, Shadow, I can't! Please slow down!" pleaded Maria, her voice breaking. Shadow knew that his chances of survival were dwindling with every step he took while dragging Maria around with him. But he didn't want to even consider life without her._

'_C'mon, over here!" he screamed over the blares of the alarm and quickly turned right into another corridor. They tried to make their way to a different wing of the colony, but the entrance to that wing was quickly sealed off by more soldiers._

"_There's the project! Fire!" shouted one of the soldiers, followed by the sound of speeding bullets rushing past Maria and Shadow. Shadow pulled Maria into another room and secured the door behind them. The two had spent much of their time in the colony on this very room. It was one of the few rooms in the entire colony with a direct view of Earth. A slightly-raised circular shaped platform stood in the middle of the room. Shadow and Maria looked around the room. There was no other way out other than the way they came in. The soldiers were now trying to break through the door. They were trapped._

"_Shadow…" Maria said, looking at her companion. Tears were now welling up in her eyes. "It's time."_

"_No!" Shadow screamed at her. "No, there has to be another way!" He knew this wasn't true. "I can fight our way out of this, Maria!"_

_She only looked down in defeat and began to sob. They were about to lose everything. "Shadow, we discussed this," she said, having to fight through more tears. "If we were ever in trouble…I'd get you out of here, right?"_

"_Maria…" Shadow began to plead._

"_Right?" she asked, almost yelling at him. Shadow had never before seen her so angry. He bowed his head and reluctantly nodded yes. "Okay. Stand on the platform." Shadow looked up at her worriedly. "Do it!" she screamed again._

_So he did it. He stood on the small platform and watched her move towards the controls on the far side of the room. She had her hands on the controls. With a push of a button, a stasis tube sprang up around him and soon surrounded him entirely. She looked fearfully at the door, which was now denting due to the efforts of the soldiers. Now she looked at Shadow. He couldn't make out most of what she was trying to say._

"…_Please, Shadow…do it for me," begged Maria. "Do it for all the people on that planet." She was breaking down crying now, and Shadow couldn't help but feel the tears in his eyes. The bangs were still coming. The door was starting to groan as it gave way to the soldiers. "Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog," were her last words._

_The soldiers had broken in just as she pressed the button. There was a split-second delay between her pressing the button and the tube ejecting out of the colony and into space. In that delay, Shadow himself heard the gunshots. He watched as his best friend collapsed to the floor._

_

* * *

_

Shadow looked around. He wasn't on the ARK. He was on Earth, once again with people coming for him. He had gotten his best friend killed, he thought to himself at first. No, he didn't. The people killed him. Those violent and hateful people had gunned down his sweet Maria.

"I still remember what I promised you, Maria, for all the people on this planet," Shadow murmured to himself. "Revenge."

He leapt off of the bridge tower and began to grind down one of the large cables that connected this tower to the next one. He jumped off of the cable and Spin Dashed right through the large group of cars that awaited him, blowing through all of them without losing any speed. He then pressed on, running through deserted toll booths and taking off for the highway exits. As he ran, fighter jets roared by and dropped bombs all around him, though he dodged them all. Like he was 50 years earlier, Shadow had no idea where he was going. This time, however, he definitely knew _what_ he was going to do.

He jumped across a gap in the highway, ignoring the barricades that blocked it off and continued running. He then leapt and latched onto a pulley which carried him up towards an elevated section of the convoluted highway. He got off and continued to run as fast as he could.

Soon, the G.U.N. robots joined the party. Although they would not have normally been a match for Shadow's strength, the hedgehog, in his fury, crushed them all to pieces and gave them no chance at attacking.

"Man's creations don't stand a chance," said Shadow to himself. "Soon, man himself will have to answer to me."

* * *

Sonic had woken up to see that night had already fallen. He himself had fallen asleep, a result of his exhaustion following his escape from the huge G.U.N. truck. He stretched and yawned as he rose to his feet.

He had begun to wonder whether it had been the right decision to escape G.U.N.'s clutches, but he had decided that it was all for the best. Given G.U.N.'s usual methods of thinking, Sonic figured that G.U.N. would probably have held him captive even if they did find out that he was innocent, if only to show the people that someone was being held responsible for a crime. He knew that's what they were doing with Eggman. The government now had everyone convinced that Eggman's purpose was to destroy Central City using Chaos, although Sonic knew that was not entirely true. Although the doctor was responsible for releasing the monster, he had not intended on letting the monster kill the people he was trying to enslave.

On the other hand, Sonic knew there was a second hedgehog out there. It was his fault that Sonic was now on the run, and he wanted to meet this impostor face to face. He figured that if he turned in the real culprit, he would definitely clear his own name.

The hero began to walk from the grassy knoll where he had fallen asleep and made his way to the outside of an abandoned train station. All of a sudden, a light came down on him from above. He looked up, squinting through the brightness, and saw a military helicopter not unlike the one he had just ridden in flying above. It had discovered him using its searchlight.

"There he is! Get him!" yelled a voice from the speakers of the helicopter.

Sonic stood where he was, slightly angered. He wasn't going to make much progress in finding this hedgehog if G.U.N. kept sending operatives to intercept him. Soon, Sonic heard the roaring of an engine moving towards him. Was this another truck? It definitely wasn't going to be able to get to him from where he was. He listened harder. It wasn't another truck, but it was still something huge. He followed the sounds until he saw a huge mech fly over to the knoll and land right in front of him, making a heavy metallic sound as it landed.

"Spider Troop 'Big-Foot' reporting to headquarters," said the mech's pilot. "Suspect has been located."

"Want some more, eh?" Sonic called out with a smile. "All right, bring it on!"

The mech took flight again and rose several feet into the air before heading towards Sonic. Sonic leapt up and began to bounce himself off the ground, almost like a basketball, gaining height with every bounce. When the mech got close enough, Sonic launched a homing attack at the mech's cockpit. Sonic had hit it with such force, that, in spite of its huge size, it was pushed backwards a decent distance. The cockpit was damaged, but not too badly. The mech turned around to gain speed and made a u-turn back towards Sonic.

Big Foot then began to rain bullets all around Sonic, who spun away from them with ease. He then scaled the side of the abandoned train station and made its way on top of it. He leapt off towards the mech and again landed a Homing Attack right to its cockpit.

"Requesting backup, requesting backup!" the pilot yelled. The mech had landed several feet away from the station now and Sonic stood in between the mech and the station. The mech unloaded a series of rockets towards Sonic, who deftly dodged them while at the same time making his way closer to the machine. Soon, Big Foot had run out of firepower and had left itself wide open for another Homing Attack from the hero. The mech collapsed. It was destroyed.

Once again exhausted, Sonic turned away from the downed mech and tried to leave. He wanted to be anywhere but where he was right now. Suddenly, he heard someone call to him from behind.

"Freeze!" the voice called. Sonic turned around first and then did what he was told. The pilot of the mech had gotten out of his machine and was now pointing a gun at the hedgehog. "Don't move…" he said weakly, coughing a little. "Just come with me, and no one gets hurt."

"Sorry, dude, but this hedgehog is too free a spirit to be locked up," said Sonic. "I can't come with you, I don't know what else to tell you."

"You better, or I'll shoot!" the soldier yelled with all of his might. He began to cough loudly again.

"Well, I am the fastest thing you'll ever meet, so I highly doubt you would hit me even if you tried," Sonic tried to reason.

Nonetheless, the pilot cocked his gun. He aimed for his target and was set to pull the trigger. Until he was hit.

Shadow, fresh off of his rampage on the highway, appeared and knocked out the pilot with a swift Homing Attack to the body. He had seen that image before, a soldier with his gun pointed and was determined this time to stop him.

"NO!" Sonic screamed and ran over to the pilot's unconscious body on the ground, not moving. "What did you do? You could have killed him, you idiot!" He shouted at the pilot's assailant. He looked up at his direction and began to realize who he was.

"It's you!" Sonic yelled. "You're the fake hedgehog the military has confused me for!"

Shadow glowered at him. "So this is the thanks that I get for saving your life?" he asked. "He was about to shoot you, you know."

"Don't you know who I am?" Sonic asked with a self-centered tone. "I would have dodged anything he shot at me pretty easily. Besides, you're one to talk! It's because of you I've been trying to avoid the military in the first place!" Shadow just smiled. This angered Sonic even more. "That's it? You're going to smile? Why don't you say something?"

He had finally reached his breaking point. Sonic charged at Shadow at full speed. Shadow was surprised at Sonic's quickness, but nonetheless, was able to avoid him. "Chaos Control!" Shadow yelled, pulling out the green Chaos Emerald that he had stolen earlier in the day. Sonic reached out to try and punch Shadow, but ended up swinging at thin air.

"Where'd he go?" asked Sonic. He turned around. Shadow was there. "How did you do that?" Still angry, Sonic decided again to charge Shadow, but Shadow disappeared just before he could lay his hands on him.

Sonic exclaimed in disbelief. "Wow, how is he doing that? He can't be that fast, can he?" He then scanned his enemy. Shadow was tossing a Chaos Emerald up and down and catching it. Now, Sonic began to understand. "He isn't that fast at all. He's using the Chaos Emerald to teleport!"

"Now you're catching on," Shadow responded. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Shadow. The world's Ultimate Life Form." Just then, the two heard sirens coming in their direction. "It seems the authorities have caught on to our location. It's a shame it'll only be you they'll find. Farewell!" Shadow said to Sonic tauntingly before teleporting again.

"Wait!" Sonic called out. But it was too late. The other hedgehog was gone. He could only stand and stare at the spot where he had been before. The sirens were growing louder. Sonic was going to be captured again, and this time there would be no escaping.


	6. Chapter 5: The Space Colony

_Chapter 5: The Space Colony_

Now back on his own turf and having regained some of his supplies, Robotnik had decided to build a space transporter to get onto the ARK. He had commissioned some of the robots already at this pyramid base to get to work on a spaceship, but the doctor was aware that there would be no chance of them finishing quickly enough, so he began working on the transporter.

All of this extra work was taking its toll on Robotnik. He had expected that his grandfather's secret weapon would have brought the world to its knees right now, but he knew he had to be patient. The hedgehog has a plan, the doctor thought to himself.

At least Robotnik knew for sure that he had one thing in his favor: Shadow appears to be equal, if not superior, in ability to Sonic, just based on the fact that Shadow easily took down the G.U.N. mech at Prison Island. He did not know at the time that Sonic had already been captured twice by G.U.N., but at least assumed that the authorities would be after him after having confused him for Shadow. The thought of Sonic being on his heels overjoyed the doctor, who felt that Sonic should have to feel how he feels all the time.

Robotnik's plan was this: he would teleport himself into the loading docks of the ARK, where he knew for sure there would be a **floor**. He had learned from past experiences that he could teleport to a place with no ground beneath him, leaving him only to feel helpless as he fell. He didn't know the exact layout of the colony; such records had been destroyed many years ago. He knew that he had to get to the central control room of the ARK, but he didn't want to risk teleporting near the center of the colony because he didn't want to risk unexpectedly falling to his death. All that he could obtain were photos of the colony where he was able to find certain locations, like the loading docks, just by looking at the colony's exterior.

After a few days, Robotnik had finished up construction of the transporter and was ready to teleport. He had built the transporter into the ground in front of the monitor in his computer room and was now in his Egg Walker and on top of the transporter. He ran the transporter program on his computer and typed in the words "space colony ark". He watched as a cylindrical beam of purple light surrounded him.

"All's working according to plan," Robotnik said to himself smiling. "Here goes nothing."

His body felt like it had turned to mush, as if all of his bones had disappeared. He heard his Egg Walker groaning and feared for a split-second that it may not survive the trip. However, he felt himself land in the loading dock, and he and the machine both were in one piece.

"Okaaayyy, it wooorked," slurred the doctor. The trip had made him extremely nauseous.

He had barely had time to recover, however, as he had encountered G.U.N. beetles stationed at the docks. These beetles, though, appeared to be of an older class of beetles compared to the beetles that he had previously been fighting, and essentially went down without a fight.

"These robots must be at least 10 years old," said Robotnik to himself. "I guess the government doesn't care much for the security of this place."

He blasted his way through several doors and more waves of G.U.N. beetles before coming to an area where he had to lower himself down with a conveniently placed cord. He figured that the government had possibly decided to fix up some of the damage incurred in the ARK from its raid 50 years ago, but had given up. Another thing the government wasn't taking care of in the colony.

The doctor made his way into what looked like an experimentation room that had pools of burning liquid to the left and to the right of one narrow platform. He had to walk across this platform in order to get to a rising platform on the other side of the room; this platform lifted him up towards another door that opened on its own via a sensor.

He now found himself inside a storage room with more outdated G.U.N. robots. There were two floors to this room, both cluttered with robots and wooden and steel crates. He blazed through all of the bots and then smashed through the crates that blocked his path before finding himself at another door. This door also wasn't secure and opened automatically for him.

The next room was another experimentation room. The half of the floor on the far side of the room was nonexistent, revealing an abyss with more toxic fluid waiting at the bottom. Empty stasis tubes were rising from the fluid and made their way up the room and through a hole in the ceiling. The doctor made a note of these, as they would certainly explode if impacted. He was able to use his Egg Walker to hover over the gap in the room, and then made his way through another door.

Eggman now found himself in a corridor with a locked door in front of him. This door was much more secure than the other ones. He fired cannons at it. Easy, he thought to himself. He was wrong. The door did not budge. He fired some lasers at it next. Again, it did not move.

"There has to be some kind of switch here somewhere," he mumbled to himself as he turned his body in every direction in search of something that could open the door. Nothing to his left, nothing to his right. Behind him was a stack of boxes arranged in a staircase-like pattern. It looked promising, so the doctor hopped up on each of the boxes before he found a switch at the top-most box. He hit it, and lo and behold, the door opened. He made his way back down and passed through.

He was caught by surprise in this room, as there had to be over 15 beetles simply milling around aimlessly in the room. A few of them didn't even seem to realize someone had just entered. The doctor swiftly locked on all of them and fired a laser each, wiping them all out.

He moved forward onto a platform which was floating above another abyss. The platform then descended slowly down the abyss, revealing several beetles flying around about halfway towards the ground. The doctor made quick work of these before hovering off of the platform towards another door.

He passed through the door and was immediately ambushed by two beetles. The doctor had not anticipated this and took damage from a cannon shot from each of the beetles. Robotnik felt a shock, but was otherwise unharmed.

"I have to be more careful, they're starting to work a little harder now."

This new room was configured opposite to how the last one was. The doctor started at the bottom of the room and had to step on a platform and work his way up an abyss. The path up to the top seemed clear. All of a sudden, an entire horde of flying beetles came dashing in from the door that he had just come in from. As they began to fire at him, the doctor tried to inch towards the edge of the platform to avoid the shots, but he found that the platform had locked the legs of the Walker in place. He couldn't move at all, and the Walker was taking serious damage.

Trying not to panic, Eggman hit a button on the Walker that enabled the top half of the mech to spin around, allowing himself to rotate although his legs were stuck in place. He fired several shots, destroying many beetles, but there were too many. He couldn't get them all at once.

"I might have to use the Power Laser again," the doctor said to himself. He remembered, though, that the Laser had sapped an incredible amount of energy from the Walker the last time he tried it, so he hesitated. He might not have enough energy left to get to the control room.

All of a sudden, there was no need for him to make a decision. He could have sworn something had flown by. One beetle went down. He swore that he had nothing to do with it. Another was blown to bits. Again, he did nothing. Soon the rest went down, falling back down to the surface below. What was doing that? Could they have been destroying themselves? He decided not to think much of it and merely continued on. The platform eventually stopped and he was in a position to hover his way over to another door – which opened up to _outer space_.

Apparently, there was once a bridge where this door opened. Not anymore. It had presumably collapsed years ago and was now likely drifting out in space, not making itself useful. First, Robotnik had to solve the problem of being unable to breathe in space, which he did by pushing a button to have a helmet appear and latch itself around his head. Then, he was going to have to find a way to cross this gap. He noticed another, more narrow bridge below him. He was going to have to be extremely accurate if he was going to land on it.

He leapt from the doorway and used his jet boosters to lower himself down slowly to the bridge below. The fact that the Walker was so damaged didn't help, as it shook violently during the fall, making the direction in which it fell unpredictable. After anxiously steering and maneuvering the Walker towards the bridge, the doctor finally landed, although in a position where it almost tipped over when it did.

He had finally made it. He went through the door at the end of this bridge, crossing into a hallway with a large steel gate at the end. Painted in block letters on the gate were the words, "CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY". The doctor noticed a camera at the top and to the right of the gate and looked into it. It started to open, slowly revealing a large room with a narrow walkway which was suspended over a dark, black void. A large mechanism, which vertically stretched so far it disappeared to the blackness of the bottom and the top of the room, lay at the end of the walkway. Standing in front of it with his back turned was Shadow the Hedgehog, who had teleported to the colony immediately after his encounter with Sonic.

"I've been waiting for you, doctor," said Shadow. "I'm sorry about the robots. G.U.N. left some robot troops here years ago, although they're so old, I don't think you had much of a problem." He apparently didn't notice the extent to which the Egg Walker was damaged. Now extending his arm out towards the machine, Shadow proclaimed, "I now present to you one of your grandfather's most glorious achievements. It probably ranks second, to, well, myself."

Eggman now jumped out of his Walker and stared at awe at the machine. Now that he was closer, he saw a relatively large computer (though it was dwarfed by the size of the contraption itself) which appeared to control the entire machine.

"Anybody could tell you the ARK was the first space colony created by mankind," Shadow continued, "but almost nobody knows that the ARK contains a top-secret research facility where weapons of mass destruction were once created. This is probably the most dangerous of all the weapons."

The doctor looked at the machine again. It was mainly made up of the one thick pipe-shaped part which scaled the height of the room, the computer, and four spherical additions above the computer which revolved around the pipe like hands would move around a clock. Behind the computer on the pipe were seven octagonal slots.

"This weapon, capable of destroying an entire planet, is codenamed, the 'Eclipse Cannon'," Shadow declared proudly.

"Destroying an entire planet…" said Robotnik, still awe-struck. "Could this be my grandfather's legacy?"

Ignoring this last question and continuing on, Shadow said, "It's been deactivated for some time now," while grabbing the green Chaos Emerald off of the keyboard to the computer. "The only way to reactivate it…" he said while tossing the Emerald at one of the slots, "would be with large amounts of energy." The Emerald then guided itself into one of the slots like metal to a magnet. It clicked into place and green light shot out from the tube and towards the sides of the room before they disappeared into the emptiness.

"So, this is why we needed Chaos Emeralds!" said Eggman boastfully, as if he had just made a terrific discovery.

"Exactly!" Shadow responded with delight. "The only way to reactivate the machine and unleash its full potential would be if we had all seven Chaos Emeralds. Should that occur…the world would be yours!"

The doctor started to laugh maniacally. "This is an excellent plan! Everything I need is right here! All I need are the Chaos Emeralds, and I could threaten to destroy the Earth! I'll take over the world and create legacy that would fathom even my grandfather's! Everyone will be down on their knees to serve me and the Eggman Empire!"

"…The Eggman Empire? I thought you didn't like the name, 'Eggman'?" asked a voice from above. The two looked up. They couldn't see anything in the shadows above. Suddenly, they noticed what seemed like wings – a bat's wings – spread out. Rouge had been hanging upside-down on the ceiling listening to their entire conversation. She then glided down in between Shadow and Eggman. "Do you really think all this will be THAT easy?"

"As a matter of fact, I do, bat girl!" shouted Eggman angrily. "And how did you manage to get in here, anyway?"

"Easy," she responded, looking straight into Eggman's jet-black glasses. "You don't exactly cover your tracks very well. I snuck into your pyramid base, found your transporter, and followed you here into space!" The doctor still stared her down angrily. "What? You should be thanking me! You would have been killed back in that other room by those G.U.N. robots if it wasn't for me!"

Robotnik started thinking. Then it came to him. The beetles that seemingly destroyed themselves were actually taken down by Rouge.

"The way I see it, you owe me, doctor!" she said, winking at him.

"Owe you? I owe you nothing, girl!" he screamed.

"Well, maybe we can settle on a deal," she said, this time looking at Shadow. "I first met your doctor friend here when we came across the same Emerald, although it was the Master Emerald." She turned back around to Eggman again. "You said you had picked up the Master Emerald's signal from your Chaos Emerald." Upon hearing this, Eggman remembered his silver Chaos Emerald, and pulled it out of the compartment in his Egg Walker and stared at it. "You must have some kind of radar that can pick up the locations of the Emeralds, right? If I can have this radar, I should be able to help you."

"Oh, really?" he responded. "How so?"

"Well, I have some idea of where the Chaos Emeralds are. I couldn't exactly pinpoint their exact location for you, but that's where the radar should come in. Also, it may not look like it, but I am also a treasure hunter who happens to specialize in jewels with mystical powers." She gave a wide grin and pulled out a dark blue Chaos Emerald, flashing out before the two pairs of eyes. Shadow was awe-struck. Eggman could feel his jaw drop. The two looked at each other. Shadow gave a little smile and nodded at him.

Eggman sighed. "All right, then. We'll do it."

"Excellent!" she squealed with pleasure.

"Wait a minute!" Shadow called out. Rouge turned around again to look at him. "You never told us where you thought the Emeralds were."

Rouge smirked. "Well, if either of you have been watching the news lately, you know where one of them is."

Eggman started thinking. "You're right, the fox boy has one!" he exclaimed. Shadow had no idea who they were referring to, but at least pretended he did.

"The other three are on Prison Island," she said with a huge smile, now exceedingly proud of herself. The other two, though, reacted completely differently. They looked at each other now in shock.

"How do you know this? You can't be completely sure, can you?" asked Shadow.

"Well, c'mon! They've got a well-secured safe-room there. It's probably one of the most secure places in the world." She saw the looks on their faces. "Unless you two are scared. I mean, you already did it once, right?" she asked looking at Eggman.

"I know!" Eggman screamed. "It's just, y'know, not my idea of a vacation! Are you positive they are there?"

"Listen, I've done research, they have to be there. It's not like you have any other leads, right?"

Shadow and Eggman made eye contact again. Neither of them did anything. Finally, Eggman gave in. "All right. It seems we have no other choice."

Rouge jumped in celebration and Eggman watched her, making an awkward-looking face. The Ultimate Life Form was definitely not as convinced as the doctor and eyed the bat suspiciously.


	7. Chapter 6: Return to the Island

_Chapter 6: Return to the Island_

"Never in a million years did I think I'd be back here," said Robotnik dejectedly.

They were probably the strangest trio anybody could ever meet. There was Dr. Robotnik, better known as Eggman by his adversaries, who, until about two weeks before, hated hedgehogs with a passion. This, of course, changed because his most powerful ally now happened to be a hedgehog. His motives for being back on Prison Island were clear. He wanted to rule the world.

Of course, there was Rouge the Bat, whose agenda was the most confusing of the three. She is a government spy and yet she had not informed her agency about any specifics of the plan to steal from the island, while she works with Shadow and Eggman but refuses to tell them how she has received information on the whereabouts of the Chaos Emeralds. Was she good, or was she evil? She was decidedly neither, with secret hopes of having all of the Chaos Emeralds all in one place where they would be easy to steal. She had also collected a few Master Emerald shards prior to meeting with the two others, and hoped to have a fully-restored Master Emerald in her possession as well.

Shadow the Hedgehog stood to the left of Robotnik and his Egg Walker with his arms crossed and the same indifferent look on his face. His quiet demeanor had seemed to deflect any suspicion as to his motives, but only he knew the exact reason for why he was ready to steal from the island. It had seemed he was only serving Robotnik to repay him for freeing him from this same island, but this was far from the truth. His motives dated back to a 50-year old promise for revenge. He knew exactly how he was going to do it, too, but he knew he couldn't let the others find out.

"Okay, let's run through the plan one more time," said the doctor, trying to instill confidence in his comrades. "I'll head off towards the aircraft carriers and stir up a commotion, distracting the soldiers and allowing you to get to where you need to be unnoticed," he said to Rouge.

"Right, then I'll head into their security vault and take the Emeralds," said Rouge.

"Mm-hmm, that's right," nodded Eggman approvingly. "Then, Shadow, you will enter the armory in the forested section of the island and plant this dynamite. We'll blow this entire island to bits before anyone knows what happened to them! And maybe we can finally get rid of Sonic once and for all!" He cackled maniacally, aware that he had a grand opportunity to take down Sonic now that he was imprisoned and virtually helpless. Shadow, though, appeared to be bored and didn't appear to be listening. He was looking off in other directions with his arms still crossed and his face still emotionless. "Have you got all this, Shadow?" the doctor asked.

Shadow finally turned his head to look at him. "Of course," he said, with as emotionless a tone as his face appeared.

"All right, I think we're ready!" shouted Eggman. "Now, I'm setting the timer for 30 minutes. That's all the time we have, so we either have the Emeralds by then, or this whole island goes down with them. Got it!" He looked at the other two. They nodded at him. "Okay, let's do this!" He walked off in the direction in which the warships were docked. Rouge looked at Shadow before they followed him.

"Good luck," she said to him while giving him a smile.

He peered over his shoulder to look at her. "Good luck to you, too," he said rather blankly. Rouge giggled to herself and went off to follow the doctor. Shadow paused for a moment before eventually following them too.

* * *

All the excitement in Amy Rose's life seemed to revolve around what was going on in the life of the guy she adored, Sonic the Hedgehog. Less than a month ago, she was complaining of how boring her life was. She had just participated in ancient echidna rituals with Knuckles, mainly to let the echidna know that Sonic wasn't going to be able to make it. Now, she was making her way to Prison Island to try and break out her hero from jail.

She had originally needed to speak with Sonic to alert him that it was definitely Eggman that previously broke into Prison Island, but found that he had been arrested. She knew next to nothing about the crime that he supposedly committed, but she did know that he was definitely innocent. Nothing would drive Sonic to break the law, she knew that much.

She was getting to the island via a small paddleboat, which was being rowed by Big the Cat. Even though Big had such meager means of transportation, she couldn't convince anyone else to give her a lift to the island, so she had to settle for this. Big was glad to give her a lift, aware that Sonic was the reason that he himself had escaped capture and probably the reason that Froggy was still alive (with Sonic having saved him from Chaos on the Egg Carrier). Big had originally gotten arrested for breaking into the city aquarium to recover his beloved Froggy, and had made his escape from the G.U.N. helicopter by floating down to the ground using his trusty parasol.

Eventually the two made it to the outer reaches of the island and Amy got off and said farewell to her friend. "Thanks, Big! I'm on a serious mission now!"

"Goodbye, Miss Amy!" Big called out. "Tell Mr. Sonic I say thanks for everything when you saves him!"

The cat rowed off in the direction from which he came and left Amy on her own. She stood on a runway for fighter jets, the air smelling like salt. She was wondering what she should be doing next when she heard explosions from the aircraft carriers docked nearby.

Unbeknownst to her, Shadow, Robotnik, and Rouge appeared on the same runway that she was on. Robotnik had just finished up destroying several G.U.N. droids that had not yet been programmed as well as multiple unmanned fighter jets. The soldiers manned on the island had not yet fully responded to all the commotion.

"Okay, step one of our plan is complete," said Eggman to his mammal allies. "The heat should be on me any minute now, leaving openings for you two. Go on, we don't have much time—"

He was interrupted by an ecstatic Amy who was now caught in an embrace with Shadow. "Sonic, Sonic, you made it out already!" she gushed. "Oh, you're amazing, I should have known you wouldn't have needed my help!" She had her closed throughout this entire embrace while Shadow had something between a fearful and an uncomfortable look on his face. When Amy opened her eyes and realized she was hugging a hedgehog with black fur, not blue, she jumped away from him. "Um, gross! You're not Sonic! And I just hugged you!" She gave a look of disgust.

"What, does he smell bad?" Rouge asked. This was the first time Amy had become aware of her and Eggman's presence. "I told you, Shadow, if you want, you can use my shampoo, really! I mean 50 years is a long time to go without properly bathing—"

"Amy, what are you doing here?" the doctor screamed. He was irate. He had not planned on Amy, of all the anthropomorphic creatures that inhabited this Earth, to be popping up at this instant.

"Dr. Eggman? The bat from the desert? Oh, no!" Amy screamed and ran off down the runway.

"Oh, of all the times for this to happen," Robotnik said with genuine worry to Shadow and Rouge. "Listen, you two go on, I'll take care of the brat." They nodded and ran off to their respective destinations. Meanwhile, Eggman was running off towards Amy in his Egg Walker. He had her trapped between him and the edge of the runway with only miles of sea past the runway's last edge.

"Oh, please, not like this! Any way but this!" Amy pleaded.

The doctor had attempted to lock on to her when a mech popped out the sky between them. It was Miles "Tails" Prower in his new Tornado 3, which he had transformed into his mech form, which he had called the "Cyclone".

"Tails!" Amy squealed, beaming. "You don't know how glad I am to see you!"

"Just stand aside, Amy," Tails said assuredly. "I'll take care of the fat man."

"Fat man? Oh, grow up!" mocked the doctor.

"Don't tell me to grow up, Egghead!" Tails lashed out, slamming a button on his Cyclone. A boxer's glove flew out at the Egg Walker as fast as a bullet, knocking the doctor back a few feet. "Weren't expected that, now were ya?"

Damaged, but not out of it, Eggman steadied himself and prepared for a counterattack. "Is this everything you have, fox boy? I'd be ashamed! Take this!" He yelled and fired several lasers in Tails' and Amy's direction, causing both of them to have to take evasive action in different directions.

Tails was unafraid, having defeated Eggman single-handedly the year before. That time he didn't have his Cyclone and Eggman was using an Egg Walker about 10 times the size of the one he was using now. By his calculations, the odds were clearly in his favor.

He returned fire by shooting fireballs at him through cannons on the front on his Cyclone. Eggman dodged these handily, and fired more lasers at Tails. These missed and hit some stray explosive barrels, starting a fire on the runway.

The two began to pace around slowly in a circle on the runway, eyeing each other very carefully. The battle was going on at an extraordinarily slow pace, as both combatants were trying to outsmart each other, to no avail. This was something they could easily do against enemies with lesser brain power, but they were both geniuses, so it wasn't working very well.

Robotnik fired a few more lasers in Tails direction, and he dodged these too. The problem was that the lasers hit a few more barrels, causing a fire to break out all around him. He wasn't able to move.

"All right, now's my chance," Eggman said with glee. He had upgraded the Power Laser since his trip to the ARK and was confident that he would not experience the same energy drain that he had before. He pointed himself towards the fox in his Cyclone. "Time to say goodbye, boy!"

He fired, but was thrown off-course. Amy had run over in the nick of time to smash Eggman on the side, causing him to rotate slightly enough so that the Power Laser barely missed to Tails' right. Amy and Tails watched in horror. That laser would have blown straight through 20 Cyclones.

"Argh! Amy, what have you done?" The doctor screamed. He was infuriated. "I was about to blow him straight to another continent! Now it'll take forever to recharge for that attack! You're going to have to pay for that!" He turned the Egg Walker towards Amy now, who started to cower away in fear. She put her hands up in front of her face, unable to watch what was about to happen to her.

"Get away from her!" yelled Tails more angrily than he ever had before. He fired several rockets in Eggman's direction, with more than half of them connecting. The Walker wasn't able to get its attack off and it started to smoke and collapse right in front of Amy.

Amy pulled her hands from her eyes and looked around. Then, she checked her body for any wounds. There weren't any. She was okay. She ran to Tails' side as Robotnik started to gather himself. Tails looked at the state of the Walker. There was no way he was going to be able to pull off another attack, was there?

The doctor looked up at him intensely, but he was not going to attack again. "This time," he said in a menacing tone, "I will let you go. Next time, you will not be so lucky." The Walker marched off smoking towards the aircraft carriers from where he had come before.

Tails stared him down the whole way. He gripped the controls of his Cyclone intently and was quite proud of himself. He had defeated Eggman without Sonic once again. Amy then leaned over the Cyclone and gave Tails a nice, tight hug.

"Aw, Tails, you saved me!" she said, still hugging him. "Thank you, thank you, thaaaank you so much!"

Tails was unused to female attention, so he had no idea how to react to this. He tried playing it cool and didn't say anything at first, but then Amy started nudging her head against his chest and ever so slightly stroked his lower back. How does Sonic deal with all this, he thought to himself.

"Hey, you saved me, too, don't forget that," Tails finally mustered the courage to say.

"Aw, that was nothing," she replied, though they both knew it wasn't. Tails surely would have been dead if not for Amy.

Things had become silent now. Amy still had her arms around Tails, and things were becoming pretty awkward for him. Finally, he broke the silence by saying, "So what brings you to Prison Island, Amy? I mean, I'm sure you know it's pretty dangerous here and all—"

"SONIC! I have to save Sonic!" she screamed, pulling her arms of the fox and looking around. "I need to find the prison cells and rescue Sonic, now I remember!"

"Right, okay," said Tails. He almost couldn't believe that Amy had gotten here to save Sonic before he did, although he then realized this was Amy he was talking about. "Well, that's what I came here to do. Now, see, I'm going to go in through one of these gates here, blow through all the guards, steal a keycard, and then use that keycard to open up Sonic's cell."

"'Kay, so what do I do?" Amy asked.

"Well…" Tails hesitated, reacting nervously.

"Don't tell me you were just going to fly solo on this whole thing?" She asked. She took him not responding for a yes. "Oh, c'mon, there has to be something you need help with!"

Tails stood and considered this. He had planned everything out pretty well and the plan was pretty much infallible. There was no need for anybody else's help. "Sorry, Amy, but I think I've got it covered. I have a plan set up, and I really think I should just stick to it. Plus, it ought to be really dangerous in there—"

"Dangerous?" Amy responded almost incredulously. "I knew the danger I was getting into when I came here, Mr. Prower. And besides, how old are you? 8? I should be telling _you_ that this is dangerous!"

Tails would've gotten angry at this insult to his age, but decided against it. There was no need to get mad at Amy, she's a friend. He supposed it wouldn't harm him to let her tag along with him, so long as she didn't get hurt. She handled herself pretty well against Eggman, so she should be fine, he thought to himself.

"All right, Amy, you can come," he said. Amy jumped and screamed joyously. "But we're sticking to MY plan!"

"Whatever you say, Captain Tails! I'm right behind you!"

They marched off towards the prison gates ready to start looking for Sonic. If they knew what the doctor and his mates had in store for them, they probably would have hurried.


	8. Chapter 7: The Heist and the Jailbreak

_Chapter 7: The Heist and the Jailbreak_

The fact that Miles "Tails" Prower was on Prison Island and was aware of his presence did not sit well with Robotnik. Precious time had been wasted in trying (and failing) to keep the fox from reaching Sonic. Now that he had time to reflect on his fight, he came to the realization that Tails had the seventh Chaos Emerald, and that he wasted a perfect opportunity to rob him of it. He decided in the end just to forget about it and focus on the three Emeralds that were on the island, the reason why he was there in the first place. He predicted that the G.U.N. soldiers stationed on the island were going to close in on them sooner than expected, necessitating a change of plans.

"I'm in position, doctor," said Shadow over a walkie-talkie from the armory.

"You are? All right, good," responded the doctor over his end of the radio. He was out of breath and in hiding in the jungle. He had frantically been trying to repair what he could of his Walker which he was going to need to escape the island later on. "Okay, well, there's been an unexpected delay on my part."

"What does that mean?" asked Rouge. She, too, was in position, having already made her way into the Island's vault. She had obtained a keycard and passwords to all of the safes in the vault from her connections in the government, although the other two were not aware of this.

"Never you mind that," said the doctor, still breathing heavily. There was no way he was going to let them know that he just let Tails escape with the last Emerald. "What is important is that we probably have less time now than we thought we had." The other two heard a quick shot of air, like how a shaken soda can sounds when it is opened, only this was much stronger. The doctor yelped in pain; he had just been burned. "Argh! OW! That hurt!" Shadow and Rouge stood by, unable to decide if they should say something or not. The doctor started to calm down. "Okay, okay, that's enough fooling around. Rouge, we're going to have to work with less time than we planned. Shadow, I want you to set the timer for 15 minutes, got it?"

Shadow responded affirmatively. Rouge proudly claimed, "I should be able to snag the Emeralds in three minutes, doctor," and ran off.

Prison Island's security vault consisted of three floors, three blocks to each floor (an A block, a B block, and a C block), and a room filled with air-conditioning units above the third floor. The layout to the Island only had the vault marked as a ventilation room, but this didn't fool Rouge. Once inside, she could clearly see that this room was for more than just cooling the military base, as there were rows and rows of safes on each floor and at each block.

She glanced at the radar the Robotnik had provided for her. She was unable to pick any exact locations of the Emeralds; the power of three Emeralds in a relatively small area jammed the radar, making it seem as if there were about 50 Emeralds in the vault. She was forced to use the hot-and-cold pinging method that she used to track down the Master Emerald to find these Emeralds.

_15:00…14:59…14:58…_

The pings for the first Chaos Emerald had led Rouge to the third floor safes on the C block. She ran through the list of her passwords quickly.

"Okay, third floor…C block…Safe 532…Pass code is 6683.," she mumbled to herself as she progressed. She entered in the code to this safe, and it opened. No Emerald. "Darn, must be the wrong safe," she said. The pings were coming extremely fast, so it had to have been in one of these nearby safes. Safe 533 did not have it, nor did Safe 531. She looked around some more, noticing another row of safes above the row she was currently at. She tried Safe 682, which was directly above Safe 532 and revealed the red Chaos Emerald.

"Got one!" she called out to the others. "Only two more left here now!"

_13:43…13:42…13:41…_

"You better hurry up if you want to make your three minutes," Shadow pointed out.

Rouge acknowledged this and began to work faster. She listened for pings for the next Emerald, but didn't hear any. "Wrong floor," she said to herself. She leapt off the third floor, landing perfectly on the first floor and began to hear pings. She began to fly around the floor until she pings grew quicker. She was in the A block when she got to Safe 207. She made sure this was the right safe before opening it. True to her instinct, it held the purple Chaos Emerald.

"That's two! Making solid time!" she said excitedly, though she gave the impression that she had not lost her composure.

_13:08…13:07…13:06…_

"Okay, Rouge, find that last one and get out of there!" Eggman commanded. "I've got a bad feeling you won't be in there alone for too long."

She began to listen for pings there on the first floor. Nothing. She then climbed up the safes up to the second floor. Still nothing. It has to be on the third floor, then, she thought to herself. She made it to the third floor. Still nothing.

Her heart starting pounding. How could this be? Was her intelligence wrong? Was there no third Emerald after all?

"Rouge, what are you doing? Do you have it yet?" Robotnik asked.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it," Rouge said, although she had definitely hit a wall. She quickly leapt down from the third floor to the second and then from the second to the first, but there were still no pings. She looked around again. It had to be here, she thought to herself. This is the only place in the world it could be. She reanalyzed her surroundings. There were the three floors…there were three blocks to each floor…what about the air conditioning units above the third floor, she asked herself in her mind.

She climbed up above the third floor and anxiously made her way towards an open vent in the ceiling. There were G.U.N. robots here, which Rouge found strange. They must have been there for some reason, she thought to herself. She started hearing pings again, and they were fast pings. She flew around the room, feeling the pings getting faster as she flew over the southwest corner of the room. She dropped to the ground. Faster still. She looked around her. Other than fans and air conditioners, there was only a lone G.U.N. robot here. Unless…

Rouge ran up to the robot and gave it a swift roundhouse kick to the abdomen, knocking it out of commission and revealing a huge hole where she had kicked it. She reached her hand inside it. She could feel it. She pulled out the third Chaos Emerald; it had a light blue color.

_12:02…12:01…12:00…_

"I've got 'em, I've got 'em all," she told the others over her walkie-talkie.

"Excellent," said the doctor. "Now, all you have to do is find your way out of there and bring them—" He was interrupted by the sounds of metal doors closing.

"Oh no," Rouge said with apprehension. "I think they've found me."

"No, Rouge! You have to get out of there now!" Robotnik screamed.

She made her way to the entrance of the room, as it was the only way she knew that would be able to get out. She gasped when she got there. The door was locked shut, but that was the least of her concerns. Another flying G.U.N. mech was in front of the door.

"This is 'Flying Dog' to headquarters, over," said the pilot. "The intruder has been spotted. Requesting permission to engage." The pilot got his permission and began to fly at Rouge. She turned around and started running on the ground of the first floor of the vault as fast as she could.

"Guys, I need help," she said, almost moaning. "There-there's a mech in here. The exit's blocked. Please come help!" Her voice started to break as she ran, ran for her life.

_9:58…9:57…9:56…_

* * *

Sonic was pacing in his prison cell, as he had been for the past few days. He had his own little holding cell in one cramped room. There were no other cells, and no other prisoners. There was one ceiling light beside an air vent that hung above him and only one door out, which was used by guards only to give him meals. The cell would only open with a keycard, which he attempted to nab from guards, but his efforts always failed.

His best attempt at trying to get a guard close enough to his cell was when he told him that he wanted to "show him something." That guard merely responded that "they were trained a little better than that" and smiled. He was the nice guard, and he worked days. The night guard seemed to be forever ticked off at something and was always in a bad mood. He would often smack his nightstick up against the bars of the cell just to get Sonic away.

However, it wasn't because of all of this that Sonic was so edgy. It was the fact that there was some hedgehog walking around free out there while he sat there and rotted. For something he didn't even do, no less.

"When I get my hands on him," Sonic would mutter to himself. "He's the one, not me... Does my fur look black to you?... I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, he won't escape me…"

All of a sudden, he heard a rattling coming up from above. He looked up. The cover to the air vent was shaking.

"You having trouble in there? You sure don't want me to help?" echoed a young fox's familiar voice.

"No, I've got it!" called back another voice. Sonic recognized this voice too, but he had seriously hoped that _she_ of all people hadn't shown up to rescue him. He was supposed to be rescuing her. His hopes ended up not coming true as Amy Rose had unscrewed the bolts on the vent cover and had fallen down screaming, landing on her side. She got up immediately, dusted herself off, and looked at him with a smile.

"Ta-da!" she whispered enthusiastically, posing with her arms extended and beaming at her hero. Her pink fur was a mess, and her face was black with soot, but you could still sense the bubbliness that she always exhibited when in Sonic's presence.

"What are you doing here?" Sonic asked softly. Although the hero inside of him didn't appreciate needing help to escape, he still managed to feel some sort of gratitude for her efforts.

"Hitched a ride from Tails," she said in a sing-song voice.

"Hi!" called out the fox, whose voice echoed from the vent.

Sonic looked at the vent, perplexed. "Why couldn't he come down?"

"Oh, he's watching over his _precious_ Cyclone," she replied disgustedly. He swears it can do ANYTHING, but it couldn't shrink itself down to fit through that vent up there, so I'm NOT IMPRESSED," she said loudly enough for the fox to clearly hear. "I swear, he's obsessed with that thing now." She cleared her throat and said in a high-pitched voice, " 'Look, see I can lock on to ten robots at once, isn't that so fascinating?' " she laughed at her own impression, but she noticed that Sonic wasn't even paying attention. "What's wrong? Is it lonely in here? Did you miss me?"

He glared at her. "No. Never." He responded. He turned around at looked down at the ground. "It's just that there's another hedgehog out there—a fake hedgehog—and he's the reason I'm in here." He turned away again.

Amy gasped. "You mean…you mean that black hedgehog, right?"

Now Sonic was looking fiercely at her, and she ran to the bars of the cell and asked, "You saw him? Where is he now?"

"Seems like you've needed me for a lot of things recently. Informing you of the whereabouts of this mysterious black hedgehog, lying to Knuckles for you." She stopped. That was all she had. "Anyhow, if I tell you this, I think you're going to have give me something in return."

He decided to play along, since he really wasn't in position to do otherwise. "All right. What do you want?"

Amy flashed a mischievous smile. "Will you marry me?"

Sonic reacted with disgust. "Ugh, no way!"

"Aw, almost," she said, pouting. Now she pulled out a keycard and swiped it through the sensor outside the cell, opening the cell's doors, allowing Sonic to walk free.

"I might have taken you seriously, but your face gave it away," he said, now smiling at her. It wasn't the way he expected to get out, but he was relieved regardless. He had never appreciated his freedom or his abilities more than in that moment. "Where'd you get that?" he asked, gesturing at the keycard.

"Took it from one of the guard offices. They must've ran away when they heard I was here," she said, now nudging him playfully on the shoulder. On a normal day, he might have pushed her away, but he felt that she deserved at least a little bit of his respect for rescuing him.

"So, anyway, where did you see that other hedgehog?" he asked.

"He was here," she said, now with a serious face. "On the island. With Eggman."

"With Eggman?" he asked incredulously. It was all starting to make sense now. "I should've known he'd be behind all this!"

Amy was starting to walk into Sonic's cell and looked at its walls. They had writing all over them. "Did you write all this?" she asked. She had never realized the extent of his academic ability before: a lot of the things he had written were physics and calculus equations. She giggled, though, at one of the less serious drawings: a crudely-drawn caricature of a hedgehog with X's over his eyes, his tongue sticking out, and labeled, "FAKE".

She sat down while looking at all of this. She began to speak more seriously. "Look, Sonic, I know this must not mean much to you, but I really do care about you. I mean it. All right, I'm not gonna lie to you. It used to just be this crush. I mean, this thing for you. But now, I think it's a lot more than that. In the past, even though I was head-over-heels for you and stuff, I still probably wouldn't have come this far to come and rescue you, y'know? I mean, I really care now, y'know?" She paused for a second. She turned her head towards the ground. "Look, I mean, maybe we aren't _perfect_ for each other…I don't even really believe in that kind of thing. But I do think we're _really good_ for each other…but we'll never know for sure if we don't try, right? So…what do you say?"

She turned around. Sonic was gone. The only door in the room was swung open. He'd been gone for a while, and had heard nothing. "Oh gosh," she said to herself, her heart feeling like it was going to jump out of chest. "Did I really just say all that to nobody? Really?" Her face started to burn. She had never felt angrier with her hero. "Tails!" she called out to the vent above her.

"Yeah?" he responded.

"He got away." She said defiantly.

Now outside at the base's harbor, Sonic began to run as fast he could. They were right in his lap, Sonic thought to himself. The fake hedgehog and the doctor, both here on the island. He didn't know why they were here or what they were doing. All he knew was that he wasn't going to leave the island until he found them.


	9. Chapter 8: Blows Up?

_Chapter 8: Blows Up?_

_9:56…9:55…9:54…_

"…The exit's blocked! Please come help!" Rouge wailed from the security vault.

Shadow had been quietly patrolling the jungle parts of the island near the armory, trying not to attract any attention to himself. He wasn't able to marvel at the natural beauty of this place for too long, however, as the bat girl had started to plead for assistance.

"I can't shake this thing! I'm trapped! Eggman, Shadow, please do something!" she still screamed.

"Shadow, you need to get over there," Eggman instructed. "I would try, but my Walker's still far too damaged, and besides, you're still the faster one regardless. We cannot leave here without the EMERALDS! We have less than 10 minutes, can you get to her?"

Shadow thought for a moment. He could definitely get to _the vault_ in less than 10 minutes easily. It didn't seem that hard. He would have to travel from one side of the island to the other to get to the security vault, but for the Ultimate Life Form, it could be done easily. The question was, why rush? She uncovered the Emeralds for us, he thought to himself. They probably wouldn't be secured or anything by the time he got there. What's the difference if we lose her? We already know where the last Emerald is.

"Hmph, I might as well take my sweet time, then," he said to himself. He began to run in the general direction of the vault. He remembered running like this once before. Out of the blue, the red flashes were coming again. He could hear the alarms.

* * *

_They were running again, escaping the soldiers that had infiltrated the ARK. They had made their way to their favorite room: the viewing room that overlooked the Earth. Shadow loved this room. He found solace there. Most of his life he was subject to testing and research. But here, he would just hang around with Maria. He would be something close to normal._

_He remembered being trapped in the stasis tube again. She was about to press the button to let him off into space. The soldiers were so close to coming in. She was crying. She didn't want to do it. But she needed to._

_Or maybe she didn't need to. There was another way, even if she denied it earlier. He heard the door to the viewing room groan – it was starting to give way._

_He summoned all of his strength, strength he didn't even know he had. He charged right through the stasis tube before Maria could hit the button. The soldiers were now breaking through._

"_Right there! Fire!" one of them commanded. The sounds of bullets rang out all around him. They were all missing. He felt invincible. They weren't going to stop him, not a chance. He charged up a Spin Dash before he launched himself right at the group of soldiers, knocking them all down like they were bowling pins. Without giving another thought to them, he went back for Maria, still in tears, but smiling happily, so happily. That was the Maria he knew._

_He took her by the hand again. They ran out the room. The ARK wasn't a battleground anymore. Everything was all right. The scientists were going back to their jobs. Shadow would be seeing Professor Gerald any minute now for more testing. That's how it should have been…_

_

* * *

_

He was still running, but he wasn't on the ARK anymore. He was back with the real world again, in the jungle in Prison Island. He knew that wasn't how it happened. There was no happy ending. Maria was dead, the ARK had been shut down, he was asleep for 50 years.

Shadow would have given anything to have another chance at that fateful day. He never should have left Maria's side. She was his best friend…but now he has other friends. Though this memory was false, there was inspiration that went with it. He suddenly had a change of heart. Was he really going to stand there and let Rouge die? No, he couldn't. He would regret it. He finally came to the conclusion that her life was just as valuable as the Chaos Emeralds…

He grumbled in disgust. "Troublemaker!" he shouted, suddenly feeling nervous about his situation.

_8:37…8:36…8:35…_

He started to high-tail it into gear now. He could definitely get to the vault in eight and a half minutes, but he was going to need to be much quicker than that to save Rouge. He started down what looked like a grassy tunnel, but he saw the edge of a cliff waiting for him up ahead. After noticing a few huge trees with vines hanging from their branches some distance past the cliff, Shadow picked up speed and took a huge leap at the end of the path. He took hold of a vine, swung on it, saw a different path on the other side, and dismounted, landing on this new path.

It was damp and misty in this part of the jungle. The path was illuminated by fire-lit torches, seemingly set there by natives to the island (although Shadow had not seen a native on the island). He encountered a few G.U.N. bots on this path, but he ignored them, deciding that attacking them would only slow him down. He came to another device that seemed to have had to be designed by natives. It was a piece of bamboo that was tied to a vine that seemed as if it were being stretched to its absolute limits. The stick of bamboo was about as long as Shadow's wingspan. The piece of bamboo was being held down by two pieces of wood that were enclosed around each side of the bamboo. Without taking much time to think about what he was doing, Shadow pulled on this piece of bamboo, unlatching it from its holder. Since the vine that was tied around this stick was fully stretched, it snapped in the opposite direction when the stick was released, launching Shadow, who had been holding on the whole time, upwards.

As he was being dragged up, Shadow screamed and felt as if his arms were about to come out of their sockets. By the time he had entirely ascertained what was happening, he let go, causing himself to rise on his own for a moment before falling back down. He landed on his side on a pathway about 50 feet above the last pathway he was on.

"Oww," he moaned as he rose back to his feet. "I hope I won't have to do that again."

But he did. Again and again. It was the same basic process of making his way as quickly as possible through the pathway in front of him, taking out G.U.N. robots if necessary, and then having to launch himself using the natives' catapult device. He was getting closer and was making great time.

_5:23…5:22…5:21…_

* * *

After fighting his way through the harbor (which was filled now with G.U.N. soldiers and robots on high alert), Sonic had come to the forest. He was positive that the black hedgehog was around here somewhere. He wasn't just going to stand around on the aircraft carriers waiting for G.U.N. to capture him.

Sonic looked around. He had made his way to a gated, rectangular area with several G.U.N. crates, but no trees. This was in stark contrast to the surrounding area which was completely filled with trees. This forest is big, he thought to himself. How was he going to find that impostor in this place? As it turned out, Shadow answered the question for him.

Sonic saw him as he landed on a thick branch connected to one of the large trees that filled the area.

"There he is!" he shouted, more than loud enough for Shadow to hear.

Shadow was not aware of his presence until then. He had been looking far ahead of him, wondering how to proceed and get closer to Rouge. Now the blue hedgehog was around to cause him even more trouble.

"Of all the places to find this blue hedgehog…" he said rather loudly to himself so that Sonic could hear him.

"I've found you, you faker!" Sonic called out.

"Faker? Me?" he responded mockingly. "You, an inferior being, are comparing yourself to the Ultimate Life Form? If anybody's faking here, it's you. You probably aren't even good enough to be _my_ fake.

This enraged Sonic. "Get down here! I'll make you eat those words!"

So Shadow did. They were set between this rectangular area like it was an arena. They circled around, at first, waiting for the other to strike. Finally, Sonic jumped at him, aiming a Homing Attack, but Shadow jumped up spinning to block it. Sonic ricocheted off of him, landing on his feet and sliding, frustrated that he couldn't land his hit. Shadow now was ready for a counter-attack, hoping to catch Sonic off guard with a quick Spin Dash, but his adversary somersaulted out of the way. They continued like this for a few minutes, attacking, blocking, counter-attacking, blocking again, all at super speed. They were simply too evenly matched for one another.

Both of them were frustrated and impressed at the same time. Never before had either of them encountered such a _worthy_ opponent. Anything one of them did, the other had an answer. Even if one of them was able to land a hit, the other would come right back and land a hit right back at them. Sonic genuinely believed that he had the upper hand throughout the entire fight (although he honestly didn't) and was flashing his trademark smile the whole time. Shadow was the opposite, showing no emotion whatsoever, just wanting to put an end to this already.

At one point, both tried Spin Dashing into each other at the same time, causing both to fly back and land on their backs. They had been fighting so quickly, only a few minutes had elapsed. Just as they were starting to ready themselves to engage in yet another tussle, the two heard Eggman call from Shadow's walkie-talkie.

"Shadow? Where are you?" the doctor asked impatiently. "Hurry and get over here right now, with Rouge, and the Emeralds, before this island blows up **WITH YOU ON IT**!"

"BLOWS UP?" Sonic cried out in shock.

Shadow, suddenly realizing how much time had been lost, looked to one of his golden bracelets that had been counting down the time until detonation.

_3:08…3:07…3:06…_

His face contorted in terror. He had wasted too much time. He turned around and made a run for it in the bat's direction once again. "Get off the island, doctor! Don't argue, just do it! Meet me at the ARK!" he screamed into the walkie-talkie.

Sonic reached his arms out towards Shadow, and though he was angry that he let him get away, he couldn't worry about that now. He needed to get off the island. And perhaps more importantly, he needed to find Amy and Tails and get _them_ off the island.

* * *

Rouge thought she had lost Flying Dog. From her hiding spot around a corner, she took a peek to see if the mech was still where she had left it. It wasn't. She sighed with relief. She was still in the vault, clutching three Chaos Emeralds. For all their mystical qualities, one thing they couldn't do was make themselves less bulky. She was having such problems running around with them that she seriously considered dropping them at one point and either try to find an exit or fight.

She peeked around the corner one more time. Not there. But it was closer to her than she thought. The mech was not around the corner, but behind her. She heard the roar of its engine as it sped towards her, looking for a good shot at her. She turned, saw it, then turned again in the opposite direction and ran off, dodging bullets than rained all around her.

_0:56…0:55…0:54…_

"You guys, I don't think I'll be calling myself a treasure hunter for much longer," she said dejectedly over her walkie-talkie as she ran.

Just as she was beginning to give up hope, though, out came Shadow from above, now in between Flying Dog and Rouge. The mech and the bat stopped moving. Rouge gasped. He had found her. He had broken into the vault by making his way through vents that led to the air conditioning room above. With as angry a face as Rouge had ever seen from him, he leapt up, pushed himself off of a nearby wall, and landed himself right on top of the mech's cockpit. He then Spin Dashed straight through the cockpit window like he was a buzz saw, causing the pilot to lose control and crash land into some safes on the first floor of the vault while Shadow leapt off unharmed.

_0:07…0:06…0:05…_

"Shadow…" Rouge said feebly. She was still holding the Emeralds. Tears were now streaming down her eyes. He saved her from the G.U.N. mech, but there was no other way to get off the island. She was so touched by his self-sacrifice.

Shadow had other ideas on his mind. They weren't dead, they were far from it. Plus, they had Chaos Emeralds in front of them. He knew what he needed to do.

He ran up to her and caught her in an embrace, the Emeralds still in tow. Rouge closed her eyes, believing this to be a bliss way to go. "CHAOS CONTROL!" Shadow yelled out. The timer struck 00:00. They felt heat all around them for a split-second. In the next split-second, they were gone. They were safe.

* * *

Sonic had no idea how much time he had left, but it couldn't be much. He had made his way through the forest, following the path that he had come from, praying that Amy and Tails were in a place that he could find them easily. He figured that they couldn't have gone too far, that they must have been, had to have been somewhere on the harbor looking for him.

He busted through G.U.N. robots, dashed through grassy tunnels, and made his way over gaps by swinging on vines, just as Shadow was doing before. He finally made his way to a relatively narrow strip of land, overlooking a fast-flowing river. He recognized this as the way he got into the forest; he should find the harbor past that tunnel at end of this strip. Just as he was about to speed past it, however, a huge stampede of native animals leapt onto the pathway, causing it to begin to sink to the river below.

"These animals must be sensing the danger," said Sonic to himself, noting in his mind that these animals could not walk and talk like he could. "I wish I had heightened senses like that," he said in an attempt to calm himself down. He was starting to get anxious thinking of the river below. Even if he could swim, the best swimmers in the world probably wouldn't survive those rapids.

He still had a long way to go to reach that tunnel when the piece of land that he had been standing on collapsed into the river right as he jumped off of it. That part of land encompassed probably about half the entire strip. Not looking back, Sonic felt this next half of land begin to tilt behind him, and he was forced to work his way uphill. This part of land looked like it was going to collapse too, but he only needed to get through here to make it to the harbor. With his heart pumping, he raced past the herd of animals in front of him, and made a last ditch-effort to leap towards the tunnel entrance. He fell a bit short of his mark, but he was able grabbed the edge of the cliff and pull himself up now right in front of the tunnel.

_1:06…1:05…1:04…_

Exhausted both physically and mentally, Sonic thought about giving himself a break, but remembered his time constraints and tore into the harbor in search of his friends, virtually ignoring the G.U.N. robots and fighter jets that were trying to stop him. He began to break the sound barrier within a few seconds, but he realized soon enough that he might pass right by them as fast as he was going. He was starting to near the end of the harbor, as he reached the runway where Tails had battled Eggman not long before. This was worrying Sonic. What if he did pass them? Did he have time to turn around? He looked frantically left and right for a sign of either Amy or Tails when finally he did spot them. Tails' purple Cyclone was sticking out like a sore thumb. He ran over to them, and they barely had time to react to him getting there.

"We need to get off the island now!" he screamed at Tails.

Tails looked confused. "What are you talking about?"

"No time to explain, we have to go NOW!" Sonic screamed again.

"Okay, okay, let me just transform back into plane form, then we'll have to wait a minute for it to charge and get to its maximum capabilities…"

"WE DON'T HAVE 'A MINUTE'! NOW! RIGHT NOW!" now he was grabbing him. Tails was in shock, as was Amy right next to them.

"He's serious, let's just get out of here!" Amy shouted to Tails.

He nodded, transforming the Cyclone in a few seconds. The two hedgehogs perched themselves on the back part of the plane, right behind the cockpit. Tails started to pull the plane out over the runway. He only seemed to slowly start to gain speed.

"Just take off!" Sonic yelled.

"I can't just do that!" Tails responded.

_0:02…0:01…0:00_.

Just then, the three heard explosions coming from behind them. The armory had just blown up. More explosions now. Coming closer, moving through the forest, towards the harbor.

"Do it or we die, Tails!" Sonic cried one last time. So Tails did. He clearly didn't have enough speed as he would have liked behind it, but the plane got into the air just fine. They left the harbor and were now over the ocean. They could still hear the explosions, but there was no looking back. They heard one last huge bang and the sound of a huge tidal wave rushing behind them. They weren't harmed, not by the explosion or by the waves. They barely made it.


	10. Chapter 9: The Cannon Fires

_Chapter 9: The Cannon Fires_

_They were in the viewing room, and they had been there for almost the entire day. They weren't doing much, just staring down at Earth below them. Shadow had no feelings for Earth. Nothing relevant to his life was down there. All he knew were the Space Colony, Maria, and Professor Gerald. As long as Maria was terminally ill, there was no way she was ever going to get down to that planet. And as long as Maria was on the ARK, Professor Gerald would be there, too. So there seemed to be no reason to even think about Earth._

_Maria, though, was with him, and was so curious, just wondering how her life would be different if she were on Earth rather than on the ARK. "Shadow?" she asked the hedgehog. He didn't look at her, but she knew he was listening. "What do you think it's like down there? On Earth?"_

_He had never really thought about, nor did he want to think about it. "The professor once told me that he had dedicated his life to all of the people there," he said, trying not to give a straight answer. "He also said that he thought the whole reason for his living was to make people happy through the power of science." Now, he looked at her. She had that same familiar, playful smile on her face._

"_Okay, but that doesn't answer my question," she said._

_Shadow sighed. "I guess if I had to say something, it would be that Earth must be wonderful. I'd imagine it's much more free there, and that it there are so many other things to do and to see there as opposed to here. If the professor would dedicate everything to Earth's people, then I would guess it has to be special, right?"_

_He looked down. There was clearly something on his mind. "Shadow," Maria said to him. "Is there something wrong?"_

_He looked back up and out the window, back at Earth. "It just feels like I don't know anything anymore," he confided to her. "I wonder what _my _purpose is in life. If Professor Gerald created me…and all the work he has done in his life was for the people on Earth…then do I belong here? On the ARK? Or do I belong there, on Earth?"_

_She seemed to see where he was going with this. "But you like it here. With me. With all the other scientists. With Grandpa Gerald." She looked over at him, and caught a glimpse of his face, which showed no emotion like it always does. "I don't know, Shadow. All we can hope for, I guess, is that things will get better. And then maybe I can go down there with you."_

_She smiled reassuringly at him as he continued to stare blankly out the window._

"Why so sad?"

* * *

Shadow turned around. He was still in the viewing room in the ARK, albeit 50 years later. Maria was not by his side. It was only Rouge with him now. She shyly walked up beside him and started to look out the window to Earth as well.

"That was pretty brave what you did back there," she said, her eyes wandering off timidly. "I really didn't expect that from you. To come and rescue me. I guess I had you figured out all wrong."

He didn't respond and went on looking out the window once again. She continued, "That Chaos Control thing must really come in handy, huh?"

He turned his head away from her slightly. "I didn't really come back for you, y'know?" he lied. "I only came for the Chaos Emeralds. Who knows what would have happened if we just left them there when the bomb went off?"

"Oh, of course," Rouge responded sarcastically while smiling. "That's obviously the entire story behind it, isn't it?"

"Ahem, ahem," said a voice behind them. It was Robotnik. "Sorry to interrupt whatever, uh…this is," he said to the two of them. Shadow turned around and glared at him, but he ignored this. "Anyway, I just wanted to tell the two of you that everything with the Cannon is ready to go."

"Are you sure?" Rouge turned around and asked. She was looking at the doctor with eyes of suspicion. "It can't be as powerful as it could be, right? Considering we only have six Chaos Emeralds?"

Shadow, though, had already started walking towards the exit of the room. "Six Emeralds should be more than enough, at least for this demonstration. We'll be ready to put on quite the show even with the Cannon in a weakened state."

He walked in the direction of the doctor, and Robotnik had to step away to let him proceed. That was rude, the doctor thought to himself, but said nothing and followed Shadow. Rouge stayed right where she was, though, looking out the window at Earth as Shadow had been doing before her.

* * *

Sonic and Tails were sitting in different armchairs in Sonic's apartment, with Tails' Cyclone standing conspicuously in the middle of the apartment right in front of them. They were still trying to get their story straight after all that they had been through over last few hours.

"So, what you mean to tell me is," Tails started, "that the same black hedgehog that robbed the federal reserve bank was the exact same hedgehog you saw on the island?"

"How many times do I have to tell you? Yes!" Sonic said exasperatedly.

"All right, it's just that I'm having trouble making heads and tails of this whole thing. So you see this hedgehog, right? You see him in the city with a Chaos Emerald and he teleported with it, you said?" Sonic nodded. "And then you see him again at Prison Island a few days after having robbed the bank?"

"Yes! What about it don't you understand?'

"I don't know, why would he come to the island? Why would he put himself at risk for being captured after all that he did?"

"Obviously, it must have had something to do with killing me. I mean, they didn't just blow up Prison Island for no reason."

Tails just shook his head, unconvinced. They heard someone knock on the apartment door. Sonic got up slowly and looked through the peephole. It was Amy. He opened up for her.

"Guys, you have to come see this, quick!" she worriedly said. "It's Eggman!"

Sonic turned and looked at Tails. He gestured for him to come, and they followed Amy out of the apartment building and out into the city square. People had filled the streets, looking at Eggman's image on an LCD screen perched on top of a TV news building.

"Citizens of Earth, lend me your ears!" he bellowed. "My name is Dr. Robotnik. The world's greatest scientist, and soon to be the world's greatest ruler!"

"Well he's not full of himself, is he?" Tails said to Sonic and Amy, clearly offended at the doctor's claim of "world's greatest scientist."

"Now, you are about to witness the beginning of the greatest empire of all time!" he cackled with joy. The screen now switched views. Instead of the doctor, it now showed what appeared to be a spherical space rock. Thin, blue beams of light began to shoot out from the space rock until finally, there was an explosion. Half of the rock was gone, which revealed a metal surface under that part of the rock. The surface looked like a face…well, it looked like Eggman's face, with fans for eyes and an attachment protruding from the surface like the doctor's long nose. It was the Space Colony ARK, although the trio was not aware of it at the time.

The "nose" of the ARK suddenly began to open apart from its tip. Blue energy could be seen forming in this opening. Finally, a blue laser fired from the nose. The laser could be seen plainly from Earth; there was no longer a need to look at the screen. It passed by as close to skimming Earth as possible. The people on the ground in the city could definitely make out the features of the laser clearly. It was that close. The laser passed by the Earth and smacked directly into the moon. The people looked up in shock. The moon had exploded, causing a flash of light that brightened up Earth's surface thousands of miles away. After the dust cleared, it was seen, plain and simple. The laser had blown apart half of the moon, revealing only its red core.

In one instant, the people merely stood with their jaws dropped. In the next moment, pandemonium ensued. Riots started to break out. People were pushing and shoving each other. Cars were tipped over, doors were broken down, children were left crying without their parents. Sonic, Tails, and Amy tried to calm down some of the people, but to no avail. Havoc was already wreaked.

They could hear Eggman laughing maniacally once again. "Now, citizens of Earth, you have witnessed my power. The way I see it, you have two choices: bow down to me or I fire this cannon again. This time at Earth. What do you say? This will be beneficial for all of us," he remarked mockingly. "You have 24 hours to give me your answer," he concluded, the screen above now counting down from 24 hours.

Sonic, Tails, and Amy were stunned. The doctor was once again a major threat to the world.

"I can't believe it…half of the moon is just…gone." Amy said.

Sonic yelled out in frustration. Tails just stood looking up into space, wondering. "How was he able to harness the energy necessary to power something like that cannon?"

Sonic began to think for a minute. The black hedgehog, Shadow, was holding a Chaos Emerald when he first encountered him. "That's it! Tails, that's it!" he shouted out, grabbing his best friend and turning him to face him. "Chaos Emeralds! They've been after Chaos Emeralds! Remember what the President told us? Three of the Emeralds were at Prison Island! That's what Eggman and the fake hedgehog were doing there! They were taking Emeralds!"

Tails thought about this. "Yeah, that makes sense," he replied. He pulled out the yellow Chaos Emerald that he received as a gift from the President. "Only Chaos Emeralds would have had the power to cause that kind of destruction. But if they do have Chaos Emeralds, then they can't be that hard to track down. After all, the seven Chaos Emeralds are all like magnets. I can track down any of the other six using my Emerald."

Sonic chuckled to himself. "Well, I'm pretty sure I didn't understand a thing you just said, Tails, but I'll assume you're right. That's it, then. We're going to space. We have to meet up with 'em head on, and—"

He was interrupted by the wailing of police sirens. They stopped by the rioting crowd of people, but they weren't interested in the people. "The three of you, FREEZE!" a voice called out to the three of them. "Put your hands in the air and get on the ground!"

Sonic looked in the police's direction, perplexed. "You three? I can understand them looking for me, but you two also?"

"Yeah, guys, you should take a look at this," Amy said. She was pointing up at the LCD screen. The timer had been shrunken down and was being shown as a small picture in the corner of the screen. The rest of the screen showed a picture of her and Tails. They were wanted for the destruction of Prison Island.

"Are you serious?" Tails asked aloud. "They can't possibly put that on us!"

"Oh, they can, and they have," Sonic responded. "These G.U.N. guys, people in the government. They're not thinking. They're finding the first guys they can blame and are just going after them." The cops were beginning to get out of their cars, guns pointed in their direction. "Listen, you two, I'll cause a distraction. You get outta here. We'll think up a plan for Egghead later. For now, find safety!"

"Got it!" said Tails.

"Wait, Sonic, I'm not coming with you?" Amy asked, almost whining.

Sonic turned around and was annoyed. "No, Amy, you're not. I said _I'd_ cause the distraction. Just go with Tails, he'll keep you safe." He ran off. "C'mon, coppers, I'm over here!" his voiced trailed off.

Amy looked at Tails. "All right, then, it's just you and me again, kid," she said. He glared at her for calling him a kid, but did nothing about it. He ran with her inside the apartment building again. They were going to need the Cyclone again before they did anything. The world's greatest heroes were all on the run.

* * *

Robotnik was angrily banging on the controls to the Eclipse Cannon. Shadow stood by, arms crossed, pretending not to notice. He was shaking his head. Rouge, who had not been with them as the firing commenced, was just now entering the central control room.

"What's making you so upset?" she asked as she walked in. "You've managed to cause total chaos on Earth, but you're still not happy?"

There was silence for a moment. The doctor leaned over the controls. He was tired. Shadow looked at him and told him, "With the Cannon in its current state, it will take pretty long to charge back up. And even still, we need that last Chaos Emerald to unleash its full potential."

Eggman turned around to look at Rouge. He was infuriated. "Where have you been this whole time?" he asked her.

She gave a look of confusion. "Did something happen?" she asked Shadow.

"We just talked to the President of the United Federation," said Shadow ("The President!" Rouge thought to herself). "Apparently, our threats mean nothing to him. He assured us that his country would refuse to give in and that he would convince all other world leaders to do the same."

Rouge started to shrug and paced around the room. "Okay, so they didn't bite. We still have the cannon. We know where the last Emerald is. It's not a big deal! There's no need to be a little girl and throw a temper tantrum, doctor."

"We know where the last Emerald is, huh?" asked the doctor mockingly. "So, if we know where it is, WHY ISN'T IT RIGHT HERE IN FRONT OF ME?"

"Well, it's not like the fox is right in front of me," she said. "And apparently, he was on Prison Island when we were there. You didn't happen to see him there, did you, doctor?"

"Of course not," he said immediately, hoping not to arouse her suspicions. "Just…get down to Earth and go find him. Both of you! I want that Chaos Emerald before we have to fire again!"

Robotnik now turned around and walked past Rouge, heading for the control room's exit. "You got all of that, right, Shadow?" she asked the hedgehog. He had not been looking at them while they were having this conversation.

"Yes, of course, Maria," he said and walked out of the room behind the doctor.

Now alone, Rouge asked herself, "What did he call me? Maria? Who's that?" she sighed. "Doesn't matter, I guess." She then looked around, just to be sure one last time that she was indeed alone. When she confirmed this, she pulled out a walkie-talkie from her pocket. It was government-issued. "This is Rouge reporting to headquarters," she said into the walkie-talkie. "As of this moment, I have not able to confirm whether Shadow the Hedgehog is truly the Ultimate Life Form. I will continue my research on this 'Project Shadow' and will get back to you with a follow-up report very soon." She then started to flash her trademark mischievous smile. "Just don't forget about my jewels!" she finished, stowing the walkie-talkie away in her pocket again.


	11. Chapter 10: Heroes in the Desert

_Chapter 10: Heroes in the Desert_

"These days, it always feels like there's a lot of police around when you don't need them," said Sonic over his walkie-talkie.

Sonic was stowed away in the inner parts of Central City, where rioting was still fierce. He figured that even if the authorities thought he was there, they would not want to look for him due to the violence there. In most other areas of the city, rioting had calmed down for the most part – in fact, many streets were completely empty, with roadblocks enforced and people retreating to the safety of their homes. Tails, Amy, and the Cyclone (now in car form) were hanging around in a vacant lot in the city. They would have been in plain sight, except people weren't outside to see them.

"Okay, so here's what I've concluded," Tails said over the radio to Sonic. "I've tried to pick up the signals for the remaining six Chaos Emeralds, but I've found nothing. I tried to look specifically in the places where the President said that they were, and they're all gone."

"This is horrible," Sonic responded. "So we can't find any of them?"

"It would seem so," Tails said flatly. "Eggman must have found all six of them and took them into space, which would explain why I haven't been able to pick up their trail."

"I hear space is lovely this time of year," said Amy softly to herself. Just then, she heard banging noises from underneath a manhole that was located right in front of Tails' Cyclone. The noises stopped for a moment, causing Amy to wonder whether she had been hearing things, before the manhole cover shot up from the ground, flying up several feet before crashing back down to the pavement. Climbing out of the manhole was Knuckles the Echidna.

"Knuckles!" Amy called out.

The echidna looked around, seeing Amy and the wheels of the Cyclone. "Hey, Amy. And metal…thing. Long time no see."

"Hey, Knuckles!" Tails shouted from atop the Cyclone. "How'd you get here?"

He recounted the quest that he had embarked on over the last few days. He told them about the ritual in the desert (and didn't blame Sonic and Tails for not being there), and how it was crashed by Eggman and "that bat." After the Master Emerald had been shattered, Knuckles had tracked down several of the Emerald's shards in locations such as the desert, the mountainous region of Pumpkin Hill, and the abandoned mines that ran underneath Central City.

"And there were ghosts," Knuckles shuddered. "Lots and lots of ghosts."

"Ghosts?" Amy asked with a surprised look. "_You_ were scared of the ghosts?"

He ran up to her, grabbed her by the arms and shook her. "YOU DIDN'T SEE THEM, OKAY! They were horrible!" Amy was not as intimidated by this as Knuckles would have liked, and she merely responded by eyeing him threateningly.

Tails, meanwhile, was typing away on a laptop while seated in his Cyclone. After a short while, he finished typing and heard a jingle indicating that he was successful. "All right, Sonic, I've managed to do it," he said over the radio. "I've gotten into the government's computer system…now let's see if there's anything of importance that I can open up…" He browsed through some of his choices, which included: Important Dates, Meetings with other World Leaders, Photos from Miss United Federation Visit ("Pick that one!" said Knuckles, watching over his shoulder), and Presidential Agenda. He noticed that there were changes being made to the Presidential Agenda at that very same moment, so he clicked on that one.

He was pleased with what he found: transcripts that were being written at that particular moment between Eggman and the President. "Eggman and the President are having a conversation right now, Sonic! Let's see if I can track him down," he said, and typed away quickly. "Yeah, he's in the south part of the city, moving pretty quickly. He must be in his limo. If we can get into that limo, we can trace the call and pinpoint Eggman's exact location!"

"All right, we'll meet up there, bud!" said Sonic affirmatively. Tails, with the Cyclone ready to go in its car mode, sped out of the vacant lot and into the street, leaving Amy and Knuckles alone.

"…Did he just abandon you here?" asked Knuckles.

"Yeah, they have a bad habit of doing that," Amy replied.

* * *

The President was sitting in his limo, frustrated and in disbelief over the events of the past few days. Prison Island was broken into twice, blown up the second time, the military was crippled, and his two most powerful crimefighters were now apparently turning against him. And that was all _before_ the worst happened: a definite threat against him, his country, and all of humanity.

"Intelligence reports show that overall…the country's in turmoil," said the President's assistant, who was sitting on a chair opposite from him. "The economy took a devastating drop, satellite communications are down, the scientific community is in disarray wondering about the consequences of the moon exploding, and people all over are either terrified or restless. I think we have officially found ourselves a national crisis."

"Jeez, the second national crisis in two years," he said to her. She looked at him gravely.

"Your Cabinet has suggested that you personally meet with Dr. Robotnik. I know you met with him last night, but they think you have no other alternative. They want you to discuss his demands and to do anything you can to try and appease him into stopping. I can set that up for you right now."

He didn't give this much of a thought. "Put him on," he told her. He looked out the window. The street was empty. This street normally is one of the most crowded areas of the whole city, he thought to himself. There was a roadblock at every intersection, allowing his limo to pass through the streets unopposed, although there were no other cars on the streets to begin with.

"Mr. President, he's ready for you," the assistant told him.

He looked at a TV screen set up in front of him. He could see Robotnik standing in front of an entirely black background. There was no telling, at least from this view, where he might be. The doctor had a wide smile on his face.

"Good morning, Mr. President," the doctor greeted him warmly. "It is morning in Central City now, I presume?"

"Spare me the small talk, Robotnik," said the President in a stern voice. "Just tell me exactly what it is that you intend to do."

The doctor laughed. "Haha, if that's how you want to play, Mr. President, that's how we'll play." He continued to smile and he adjusted himself in his seat. The President could see that the doctor's broadcast was lagging significantly, owing from the incredible distance at which he was coming from. "Now, Mr. President, I didn't intend on boring you with all the details since I assume that you have much on your plate as it is. But if you insist, I'll fill you in."

The President kept up his hardened demeanor as Robotnik spoke. "Let's just say that what I did to the moon was merely a demonstration. The Eclipse Cannon is capable of much more destruction than what you saw." The President did not flinch at hearing this, although inside, he was greatly disturbed. The doctor continued with a smirk, "I hope you have some kind of idea where I hope to fire next."

The President didn't want to guess. "Okay, so what are your demands?" he asked.

"My demands? They're simple. Surrender. Surrender to the Eggman Empire. You and all your people and everybody else's people."

"And if we don't?" The President knew the answer to this, but he hoped he was wrong.

"Well, then, the entirety of your country will face a slow and painful death," Robotnik said, now with an unsympathetic face. The President shut his eyes, weighing his options. Should he give way to this madman, going against all of his country's principles? If he were to try and launch a counterattack, he wasn't sure of the results. The doctor might just make things even more destructive. "So, there you have it, Mr. President. Have you come to a decision? It might help you to make it as early as possible."

"NO WAY!" called out a voice from outside the limo. The President and his assistant looked out the window to their right. It was Sonic the Hedgehog, who was keeping up with the limo stride for stride. He flashed his trademark grin at them before leaping through the sun roof and inside the limo itself. The President fell back into his seat as he did this, and his assistant covered her face and started shrieking. Sonic, meanwhile, was facing the TV screen in a fighting stance. "Eggman Empire? Yeah, right!" he yelled, punching in the direction of the screen.

"Sonic? What are you doing here?" Eggman screamed incredulously. "I was under the impression we'd be alone, Mr. President!"

"We should have been, he broke in!" shouted the President over Sonic's taunts. He became frightened, considering all the recent talk of Sonic's criminal activity. He thought that maybe he was going to be Sonic's next victim.

"What's wrong, Eggy?" asked Sonic in jest. "Gotta do all your talking from behind a screen? Why don't you come down here? I'll show your face some proper destruction!"

Just as the yelling and the commotion were getting really bad, Tails suddenly appeared, also having leapt in through the sun roof. He gave Sonic a high-five as he ran over to the stack of electronic devices next to the TV screen.

"What do you think you're doing?" the President shouted at Tails, who had started quickly pushing buttons on the electronic devices. "You two are crooks! You should both be locked right up right now!"

"Yeah, except the safest place we could have been locked up was blown to smithereens just yesterday," Sonic reminded him. "And do you really believe that we did all of that?"

"All of the evidence points to you! We saw you escaping the Island by plane as it blew up!"

"Sure we did," Tails called back without looking in the President's direction. "But I think you'll find soon, Mr. President, when you review any of the security tapes that are recovered, that while we were on the Island, we were never anywhere near the western side of the island where the blasts originated."

The President's mouth was gaping, but he still believed that he and the investigators in the government had to have been right. "But Sonic, you stole a Chaos Emerald from the federal reserve bank! You knew it was there and we caught you on camera several times!"

"No, you caught this hedgehog," Sonic retorted vehemently, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper (from where, nobody knows) and tossing it over to the President. It was a picture of Shadow fleeing the bank. "Look at his fur, Mr. President. It curls upwards, my fur doesn't do that. His fur's not even blue. His is black, and they have red streaks. And plus, Mr. President, you offered me a Chaos Emerald a few weeks ago, remember? I turned it down. Why would I turn down a Chaos Emerald as a gift, just to try and steal one later on?"

The President was dumbfounded. Either he was telling the truth, or he really did a good job covering up his tracks.

A disc popped out of one of the electronic devices that Tails had been working with, and the screen had gone blank. He began to study the disc before he exclaimed, "We've got him! He's transmitting from the Space Colony ARK!"

"All right, Tails!" Sonic yelled over in approval. He turned back to the President. "Remember what I told you, Mr. Prez! And remember this: I care too much about the people to EVER turn to the Dark Side. Catch ya later!" He jumped out of the sun roof, followed by his twin-tailed best friend.

"Wait!" the President called after them, but they were gone. This certainly wasn't how he wanted things to end up. After this showing, there was going to be no way he would be able to negotiate with the doctor any more.

His assistant, who was now on the ground and had stopped screaming, responded to some beeping coming from her laptop. She looked at what it was. "Sir, we seem to be receiving an incoming signal from our agent, Rouge the Bat."

* * *

"All right, Shadow, they should be coming in your direction," Rouge said over her walkie-talkie.

Shadow was waiting at the Sky Rail in the mountains, somewhere in the vicinity of Pumpkin Hill. Rouge had finished her end of the bargain, tailing the heroes as they hijacked the President's limo, and had notified Shadow on their current whereabouts. As was expected, he saw the Tornado 3 flying up above him.

"I've spotted them, doctor, they're coming your way. Towards the pyramid," Shadow said over his walkie-talkie to the doctor. "What do we do now?"

"Just sit tight, Shadow, I'll take care of them," he replied. "I've got them on my radar now. I can't entirely be sure of what they're planning. We can be sure they know now that we're using the ARK, but I don't know why they would be heading for the base."

Shadow stood still and thought for a moment. "They must be trying to get to space from the pyramid."

"You're probably right," Robotnik responded, his space transporter and his newly-built spaceship coming to mind. "Well, you can be sure of this, Shadow. They're not going to get too far without me properly injuring them."

* * *

The four heroes were now close enough to Eggman's hidden base to the point where they could all see it plainly. After raiding the President's limo, Sonic and Tails returned to the vacant lot to pick up Knuckles and a protesting Amy, who both led the way to the base.

"So the fat dude's in that pyramid?" Sonic asked.

"Yep, that pyramid," Knuckles replied. "After the Master Emerald was shattered I watched Eggman enter that exact pyramid. And even more importantly, THAT BAT WENT IN THERE TOO!" The three of them looked at him judgmentally. "What? You saw them too, right, Amy?"

"Well, yeah, but I wouldn't consider the bat more important than Eggman," she said, rolling her eyes.

"It was her fault for everything! And you know it!" he screamed.

Ignoring their argument, Sonic said to Tails, "There has to be some way we can get to space from the pyramid. We'll get up there and kick their imperial butts! All right, team, ready? Charge!" Nobody did anything and just looked at him confusedly.

"…Maybe I should go first and find the entrance," said Tails.

"Um, right, right, you do that. All right, Tails, charge!" Sonic cried, although he didn't exactly seem enthused at letting Tails take the lead.


	12. Chapter 11: Break In at the Base

_Chapter 11: Break-in at the Base_

Tails took one look at the sand that lay beneath the platform he stood upon.

"Quicksand," he said to himself, nothing that there would be no way to get his Cyclone out if he were to fall in.

He traversed this platform before boosting himself to a set of much smaller platforms that only stood a few feet from the quicksand below. These smaller platforms seemed just big enough to fit the Cyclone on top of them. He looked around him, suddenly anxious about the little room that he had to work with. He bit his bottom lip but continued.

He came up to a sandy stone building. This didn't seem right. How was he supposed to get in? It looked like there was supposed to be a doorway right in front of him, but it was blocked by a thin layer of brick…emblazoned with Eggman's face in cartoon form.

"Too much time on his hands," Tails said judgmentally.

Tails proceeded to shoot down the layer of brick with shots from his bazooka attachment, which caused the layer to crumble with relative ease. He passed through the building now, which was comprised really of only one corridor with a few doors on the side walls that led to dead ends. He made his way to the end of the corridor, which had another makeshift Eggman-faced wall, and shot it down, passing through back outdoors.

He had made his way to a narrow bridge that was going to turn towards another building a few strides ahead. Just then, however, G.U.N. hawks began to swoop down towards him, one directly in front of him blocking his path forward, and one each to his left and right, hanging over the quicksand. Evidently, they were still trying to get in, but with no luck. Tails reacted swiftly by locking on all of them and shooting them down with lasers.

He pressed on, turning around the bend up ahead, and forcing his way through the next building the same way he did the last: by shooting through the thin layers of brick. He could see outside again, but there was no floor to walk on in front of him. He could see a series of platforms just big enough to fit the Cyclone on ahead of him, although they were spaced very far apart. Tails figured that he probably could make these jumps if he boosted long enough, so he proceeded.

He got a bit of a running start before jumping off towards the first platform. He hit the boosters right at the apex of his leap, ensuring that he would achieve maximum distance on this jump. He looked down apprehensively at the quicksand below – the jump seemed as if it were taking forever – but he made it across safely. He looked ahead. There were two more jumps he needed to make before he made it to the next walkway.

He leapt off and made his next jump. From out of nowhere, a G.U.N. hawk soared down from above, positioning itself right on top of the next platform. Tails flinched at first sight of this predicament, but realized that he had no chance to turn back as he was steadily losing altitude. In mid-air, he decided to lock-on to the hawk, quickly firing a laser at it and causing it to crumble in pieces to the quicksand below. Tails steadied himself after his attack and landed safely on that platform.

He wiped his forehead, which was now drenched in sweat. "Whew, that was close," he said to himself as he looked down at the remains of the destroyed G.U.N. bot, now sinking into the quicksand.

The last jump Tails made with relative ease. He found himself in front of a staircase with a pulley up ahead that would surely take him up to a higher level and closer to the base's entrance. First, a couple of G.U.N. robots flew in from the sky again, but they were nothing the fox boy genius couldn't handle. He shot them down, made his way up the stairs, and grabbed hold of the pulley.

Tails came to some robots up here, but they weren't G.U.N. robots. They were Eggman's monkey Badniks. They were dancing and fooling around, and were not prepared in the slightest; in fact, they didn't even seem to notice Tails' presence. Still hanging on the pulley, Tails fired lasers on all of them at once, freeing the Flickies inside of them and moving on.

He made his way through a narrow passage before boosting across a gap to the entrance of the second floor of yet another building. This building had nothing but more undersized platforms, another pulley, and more quicksand. He hopped across the buildings, marveling to himself at how good he had gotten at this, and grabbed hold of the pulley.

He ascended into the presence of more monkey Badniks. These ones were more prepared than the last batch, though, and they tossed bombs in his direction…not that they did any good, considering he was hanging above the ground. The bombs uselessly fell down to the platforms and quicksand below. He shot down all of these Badniks while hanging and then proceeded. He made his way through an archway, now moving closer to the interior of Eggman's territory.

Tails now entered a maze-like pathway with two divergent paths: one to the left and one to the right. He banked on the path to the left, which was protected by more feeble layers of brick. He plowed through these layers, but he eventually encountered another wall right behind one of them. He couldn't go on.

"Must've gone the wrong way," he said to himself.

He backtracked to the way he entered, and this time took the path to the right. He found this path again "fortified" with several walls of brick, and he smashed through each of them, only to find another wall behind the last brick layer again. This wall had some kind of seal/woman type creature engraved onto it.

"Knowing Eggman, this should be suspicious," Tails said to himself, and fired cannons straight into the wall. Although this wall was much thicker than the slim brick walls he had previously been shooting down, this wall also took damage relatively easily from the cannon shots. Eventually, Tails fully broke through and made his way to the other side of the maze and towards another building.

After that, there wasn't much variety in what he saw. It was just the same combination of pulleys, shooting down walls, hovering over quicksand, and blowing up Badniks. Without feeling too strained, he found a suspiciously unlocked steel door with triangular flags depicting the cartoon doctor outside of it. Tails had reached the entrance. Triumph. Or so he thought.

"That wasn't too bad," Tails said confidently to himself. He pulled out a walkie-talkie and said into it, "Sonic? Where are you? You close by?"

"We're right behind ya, buddy," he responded. "You really did a great job clearing up the place – hey, there you are!" The three of them had literally found him seconds after he reached the entrance.

Tails was stupefied as how quickly that had gotten there. "…How close by were you following?" Tails asked.

"Not too close, I think," said Sonic.

"He couldn't wait, I don't think he trusts you," Amy chimed, now with a severe look on her face. She obviously was not pleased with his course of action.

Sonic glared at her. "That's not true, Tails, don't listen to her." Tails was now looking down dejectedly. He really thought that Sonic had trusted him to do something on his own. Wanting to patch things as quickly as possible, Sonic said, "Listen, bud, we just wanted to be around in case something happened. Honest." The fox didn't change his facial expression; he clearly wasn't happy with this explanation.

"Maybe you should take the lead now, Sonic," Knuckles said, oblivious to the tension.

"You're right, Knuckles," Sonic responded. "Now you guys wait here and I'll get as deep into the base as I can, got it?" Knuckles nodded in agreement, but Tails still looked down. Amy was shaking her head side-to-side at Sonic in disapproval. He shrugged at her. "Whatever, I'll see you guys in a little bit."

Sonic moved over to the steel door and swung it open. It soon became obvious to him that it was a trap door. The minute he set foot across the doorway, he fell straight down into the depths of the pyramid screaming.

"Sonic!" Knuckles called after him. He looked at Amy and Tails in shock. "Aren't you two concerned?"

"…Are you really that dense, Knuckles?" Amy asked.

* * *

Somehow, Sonic was able to land on his feet. He was inside the pyramid now, but without the slightest clue of where to go next. He was in a tall but narrow tunnel with ancient markings on the walls. The tunnel was covered in cobwebs and was lit by round lights with slits down the middle, giving the impression that they were a cat's eyes. Sonic decided that his only choice was to go forward.

He made his way through the tunnel and hit a speed ramp at the end of it, which launched him over an abyss and to the next pathway. He came to a heavy stone gate with a large hourglass about his height in front of it. He moved up to the gate, trying to lift it up from its bottom to see if he could squeeze under it. He pulled up with all his might, but it wouldn't budge. Undeterred, he examined his surroundings. There was nothing there but the hourglass. Suddenly, he was struck with an idea. He ran up to the hourglass and gave a nice, hard sweeping kick so that it flipped over. The sand inside of it was now dropping. When he turned around, he saw that the gate had opened itself.

He pumped his fist at this achievement, but in that time wasted, the last grain of sand inside the hourglass landed to its bottom, causing the door to shut itself again.

"Hmm, this hourglass must be timing me," he muttered to himself. "Oh well, it's not as if time were ever an issue for me."

He flipped over the hourglass again and this time proceeded through the doorway. He made his way to a pole randomly hanging horizontally above the ground. Past the pole was another gap with an abyss separating this pathway to the next. He ran up to the pole, latched onto it, spun around while hanging onto it a couple of times, then hurled himself across the gap, landing on the other pathway.

Sonic chuckled to himself. "He's not just fast, he's JACKED too!" he praised himself, taking some time to flex his muscles. Getting back to the task at hand, Sonic followed this next path, again stopping to flip a few hourglasses to get past a few doors, before he eventually got to a wall he needed to scale. He couldn't jump it, so he bounced himself off the ground a few times until he was high enough to clear it.

He did this a couple more times before he found his next hourglass. He flipped this one over and heard the crash of a stone door slamming open, but he couldn't see it. At first confused, Sonic realized that the now-opened doorway was above him; he had to dribble himself off the ground again to get to the right height to pass through.

In the next room, Sonic found himself with a stone statue of a snake. The snake had a long metal pole sticking out of its mouth, taking the form of a tongue. He Spin Dashed to gain speed before mounting and grinding on the pole. The pole seemed to go on forever, and Sonic watched as he passed by a sea of red E-1000 Badniks below. He was definitely glad that he wasn't going to have to take on all of them at once.

He grinded until he got to the pole's end, reaching a door that needed a circular-shaped key to open. Sonic gave a wide grin.

"Come on, now, a key?" he asked aloud. "Eggy must think I wouldn't be patient enough to look for this key. Well, gotta prove him wrong, as always."

He looked around him, wondering where to begin. To his right was a passageway filled with Badniks. That's the only place it could be, Sonic figured. He took off in this direction, dodging rockets shot at him by the Badniks before taking them down. He came to another stone door that was part of a bigger and taller cube-shaped stone structure. There wasn't an hourglass to open this door. He looked around and quickly noticed that, although this entire was structure was relatively tall, he could still bounce over it. He did so and pressed on.

He continued along this passageway and came to a dead end. The key was there.

"Easy enough," the hedgehog said cockily to himself. He ran over to it and picked it up. It was just about as big as his head (and Sonic has a pretty big head). Unbeknownst to him, he had just triggered the appearance of two Badniks. Although they were not much tougher than anything he had just faced, he was going to have trouble fighting them while holding this key. He was struggling with the weight of the key as he thought about what he was going to do about these robots when the idea suddenly came to him. He made like a shot-putter and heaved the key at one of the robots. It smashed right through it, leaving its remains in a cloud of smoke. Without having to worry about carrying the key anymore, Sonic easily took out the second Badnik.

He picked up the trusty key and twirled it around in his hand, astonished at the irony that Eggman's own creations would be destroying each other. Then again, Sonic thought to himself, this shouldn't be that unexpected since the doctor isn't exactly the most practical person in the world.

Sonic made his way back through the way he came and found the hourglass to the stone door that he previously couldn't pass through. He kicked it over and proceeded all the way back to the door that needed the key and threw the key into place. The door opened, revealing another long tunnel.

"This guy seriously needs to get a life," Sonic said exasperatedly.

He immediately found an hourglass the second he walked in. He flipped it over. There was no door in sight, but he did hear a slamming sound from what seemed like miles away. He smiled to himself, glad to take on this challenge, and sped off across the tunnel. There were ghosts in this tunnel, not unlike the ghosts that Knuckles had found when he was searching for Master Emerald pieces. Sonic had to maneuver past all these ghosts, occasionally missing a stride, but he got to the other side of the tunnel and through the door while it was only about halfway closed.

He pressed on, his super-reliable legs unwavering. More tunnels and more stone doors and more hourglasses to open the stone doors awaited him. After passing through all of these, he came to a chamber with a gate that he had no chance of opening. The gate again had a huge logo of Eggman smiling painted on it. He was hoping that there would be an hourglass nearby, but there wasn't. Instead, the door needed keys. And not one key either.

"THREE KEYS?" Sonic shouted indignantly. He looked around. Too many places it could be, he thought to himself. "Guess I've done all I can," he said complacently to himself. He pulled out his walkie-talkie. "All right, you three, you can come down now."

It took a relatively long time for Tails, Knuckles, and Amy to reach Sonic, especially when considering that Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy reached Tails seemingly immediately after Tails reached his destination. Tails seemed to be calmer now, and did not seem to be harboring a grudge against his best friend. Amy still seemed slightly peeved at Sonic, but did not speak on the matter. Knuckles, despite being up to speed regarding the situation, was indifferent.

"All right, Sonic, what've you got for us?" Tails asked enthusiastically, as if he were the one who needed to get back into his best friend's good graces.

Sonic beamed at him, feeling good about the fact that Tails was back on his side. "Well, I got to this door," he began, "but we need a few keys."

"Let me check the door just to make sure, Sonic," Tails replied and walked up to the door innocently to check out the keyholes. Sonic appeared to be pleased with this, causing Amy to turn her head away in disgust. "Yeah, we definitely need keys, Sonic. Three of them. This is an important door, too. It looks it leads to the center of the base."

"Well, Eggy sure likes to fool around machinery and the like," Sonic said affirmatively. "I'm positive he would have a spaceship or two hanging around inside." He turned around to face Knuckles. "All right, Knuxie baby, it looks like this one's all you!"

Knuckles looked alarmed. "What? Why me?"

"Oh come on, Knuckles!" Sonic said, almost whining. "You've been doing all that Master Emerald hunting, haven't ya? What's the difference if it's just a couple of keys?"

"It's A LOT different, Sonic," he responded matter-of-factly. "My ability to track down the Master Emerald pieces is inborn. I'm not going to be able to just stand here and hope their locations just come to me. I mean, I won't be able to just pull three random keys out of my a—"

"Whoa, whoa!" Amy stopped him.

"What?" he asked angrily.

"Children…" she said, playfully gesturing at Tails, who started to glower at her.

"C'mon Knux, you're a natural treasure hunter," Sonic said. "The BEST treasure hunter on the planet. If anybody can do it, it's you."

Knuckles stared him down, pursing his lips. He finally decided that standing around wasn't going to do them any good. "All right, I'll do it," he gave in, causing applause to erupt from the other three. "It's for the Master Emerald, after all…"


	13. Chapter 12: The Death Chamber

_Chapter 12: The Death Chamber_

Knuckles pressed his ear up against a brick wall. Yeah, this might be something, he thought to himself. He started to dig through the wall…a little closer now…was he finally going to catch a break?

He pulled out of the hole he had dug. Nothing. Nothing again.

"This is impossible!" he lashed out angrily. His task was to procure three keys. Generally, the time it took for him to find three Master Emerald shards was around five minutes. He had been searching for keys for 10 minutes. And he still hadn't found one.

He was searching a triangle-shaped perimeter, with a red room, a green room, and a blue room at each respective corner of the triangle. He was currently standing in the red room. Each of the rooms was connected by one tunnel, creating the triangle. Located in the middle of the tunnel connecting the green and blue rooms was one large, circular room, which also had its own tunnel connecting itself to the red room.

Sonic, Tails, and Amy had agreed to help Knuckles in his search for the keys, but their dedication to the task was negligible at best. Amy had just happened to be strolling by as Knuckles started to really get frustrated. "How's it going, Knux?" she asked.

"TERRIBLE!" he roared, surprising Amy enough that she flinched. "This is nowhere near the same as finding the Master Emerald pieces!"

Still slightly shocked, Amy replied calmly, "Okay, just take a deep breath." He did as he was told. "Now…how do you normally go about finding Master Emerald pieces?"

"They just come to me, okay! I can sense them! You wouldn't understand!"

"I always try to understand, remember? I tried understanding when we were at the desert."

He looked down, suddenly ashamed of his outburst. "You're right, I'm sorry, Amy. It's just, finding the Master Emerald isn't _this_ hard."

Amy started to think. What could Knuckles do to help himself, or give himself clues? "Why don't you try searching inside yourself?" she asked, drawing from the echidna a look of confusion. "I mean, try all that meditation stuff that we did in the desert. Maybe something will happen, I don't know."

He looked at her in disbelief; he really had to restrain himself to keep himself from laughing at this suggestion. Considering, though, that he really had no other viable alternatives, he decided to give it a go. "Okay, let's try this." He sat down, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes. In his same drawling voice, he recited, "I am the last descendent of a noble race…I must guard the Master Emerald with all my might…my job is to protect the Emerald, which protects me and all others in ways that we cannot understand…"

He peeked out of one of his eyes, looking around the room. Nothing had happened.

"Wow. That was really helpful," he told Amy mockingly.

She giggled. "Well, I thought it was worth a shot." She skipped away, leaving Knuckles to wallow in disappointment. He stayed sitting. He knew that the fate of the Master Emerald depended directly on him finding those keys, but he just didn't know where to begin. He began to close his eyes in disappointment when he heard a deep, booming, almost haunting voice seemingly coming from the walls.

"Protector of the Master Emerald…" the voice began. "We are here to guide you on your quest to restore the jewel that controls your very existence…"

"What the—?" Knuckles said in shock.

"I can help you find the keys, treasure hunter…just listen to what I have to say…"

Knuckles decided to take the voice's advice, given that he had no other alternatives and that he is never averse to trusting anyone or anything. "Okay, so what do I do first?" he asked, a look of vigilance appearing on his face.

"The first key is above the small flame in a cube-shaped small room," the voice said.

"Small flame? Small room? Where could I _possibly_ find those?" he asked derisively. Each of the rooms weren't exactly huge, and almost all of them had some kind of torch lit.

"You're not close to it right now," the voice told him. "Keep moving and I'll tell you if you're getting closer."

Knuckles cautiously trusted the voice and decided to move through the tunnel from the red room to the green room. He flipped over a nearby hourglass to get the passage door open and then stepped through.

"Ah, yes, this is the right way," said the voice. "Proceed. You're getting warmer."

Knuckles did as he was told and ran along the pathway. He encountered a red E-1000 series robot here and punched it out, not losing a step. He had come to a small room somewhere still between the red room and the green room. It was cube-shaped.

"This is the room," the voice said assuredly. "Just look for the flame above you."

The echidna looked up. The voice was right. There was the first key above him, hanging on a wall just above a flame-lit torch. He climbed up and grabbed it.

"All right!" he yelled out emphatically. "Just two more now!" He looked around for the source of the voice who had been aiding him. "Hello? Hey, I got the first key! Mind helping me with the other two?"

"I guess not," the voice responded. "Let's see now. The next key is around two scorpions that don't get along."

Knuckles looked around, puzzled. "Two scorpions that don't get along? I didn't see any scorpions in here."

"Keep moving and maybe I'll give you more hints," the voice said calmly. Knuckles patiently did as he was told. He had continued on to the green room when he heard the voice again. "Walk by the U-shaped ledge on the blue path. There is a room there with four pillars."

Deciding to avoid the center room, Knuckles turned around and ran back through the tunnel from which he came. He made his way back to the red room and took a different tunnel that led to the blue room. He came to a dead end at this tunnel, seeing only a design with a bird and two deer surrounding an oval on the wall in front of him.

"Dig through the oval," the voice said.

Knuckles followed the voice's advice. To his surprise, he ended up digging through the oval, appearing in another tunnel. This tunnel was full of Badniks, but Knuckles decided to ignore them and continue on looking for the next key. He found and knocked over an hourglass, passed through the door it opened, and found another wall with the same strange design as the dead end. He dug through the oval again and achieved similar results, this time ending up right outside the blue room. From the blue room, Knuckles went down the pathway that would lead to the center room.

"Yes, this is where you will find the next key," the voice said, stopping him in his tracks. He looked around, seeing exactly four pillars in front of him, stretching from the ceiling to the ledge which they were perched upon. Knuckles jumped onto the ledge and looked around some more. Behind him were two scorpions carved into the wall above the archway that he had just come in through. He glided over between the two scorpion carvings and dug in the middle of them. There it was: the second key. He couldn't help but give a huge smile.

"Yes! One more left!" he cried out.

"Excellent," the voice praised him. "The last key can be found in the center room, in front of the hourglass."

"That'll be easy," the echidna said to himself. He hit the hourglass from where he was in the blue room tunnel and passed through the open door into the center room. The last key was the easiest to find. It was right in front of him. "Three keys! We did it!" he called out to the voice. "Where are you? I want to thank you!"

He looked around. Suddenly, the hourglass that he had been standing next to was now gone. The center room, which was previously well-lit, suddenly became entirely dark. "What's going on?" Knuckles asked. He then leapt down to a circular walkway beneath him to investigate further. That was when heard the roar. He turned around and saw the source of the voice that had been guiding him. Gleaming ever so slightly so as to dimly light the room was a gigantic ghost with a slightly blue body, rainbow eyes, and a rainbow tongue. The ghost laughed diabolically.

"You have fallen into my trap, little one," boomed the ghost. "I am King Boom Boo, the king of all ghosts. Prepare to meet your demise."

The ghost quickly moved towards Knuckles along the circular pathway. Knuckles stumbled a bit as he tried to run in the opposite direction. He couldn't believe it. Tricked again, this time by a ghost. He was terrified; nothing could have scared him more in this moment than a ghost.

King Boom Boo, not as fleet of foot as the echidna, began to throw blue balls of fire at Knuckles' feet. "Dance, little one, dance!" the ghost shouted joyfully, as Knuckles hopped out of the way. Not daring to look back, Knuckles searched the room for a way out, but couldn't find one. His only hope would be to fight this thing, but he hadn't the slightest clue how.

After having thrown the fire and gaining on Knuckles, King Boom Boo started to breathe blue fire at the echidna. Knuckles saw this and began to exert himself to the best of his ability, moving quickly enough just to be able to elude the flames. The ghost was still breathing fire when Knuckles was about halfway around the circle; it didn't appear to be able to stop. The echidna continued around the circle, noticing that behind the huge ghost was a significantly smaller ghost holding up the same kind of hourglass he had previously been dealing with.

He ran up to the small ghost and punched straight through it, causing the hourglass to flip over. King Boom Boo gasped in terror upon realizing what had happened. Both the ghost and the echidna looked up. A stone door had just opened above them, lighting up the room. The ghost couldn't take the light, and it burrowed into the ground beneath them.

"Oh, no you don't," Knuckles called out threateningly to the ghost. "Come back out! Now we're gonna dance!"

He noticed the ghost's shadow moving around in the ground. He leapt on top of it and began to dig. When he resurfaced, he brought the noticeably shrunken ghost back up with him. It feebly tried to crawl away as Knuckles tried to steady himself. The echidna ran after it, and with all his might, delivered a punch straight into the back of the ghost, propelling it forward and leaving it reeling in pain. Before Knuckles could catch up to it and damage it some more, however, the time on the hourglass was up. The stone door above them closed and darkness once again took over the room.

King Boom Boo had once again grown to its original enormous size. "What do you think you are doing?" roared the ghost.

"Beating you down, ya fat piece of trash!" Knuckles retorted. Again the ghost began to chase Knuckles around the circular pathway, throwing balls of fire at him before breathing fire when he thought he was close enough. Once again, however, Knuckles was able to escape damage and for a second time, he made his way behind the king of ghosts, punched out his diminutive minion and caused the stone door above to open.

The ghost again attempted to escape into the ground, but this course of action failed it a second time. Knuckles located its outline in the ground, dug it out, and delivered a crushing blow before the stone door closed again, blocking out the light.

King Boom Boo once again enlarged itself but appeared to have been reduced to grunts and snarls. It once again gave chase. Knuckles again was running as fast as he could, but the ghost was moving faster than ever before. Knuckles could feel it gaining on him and could hear the chomping of its teeth as it got really close. Every time the echidna thought he might have been tiring, he heard another chomp from behind him which whipped him back into shape. Eventually, the ghost abandoned this method (to Knuckles' relief) and again started to throw fireballs at him, missing every time. The echidna was able to get halfway around the circle at one point, but the ghost was prepared for this and turned around and ran towards Knuckles from the opposite direction.

"Catching on, eh?" taunted Knuckles as he turned around and sprinted in the other direction. The ghost continued to throw fireballs at Knuckles, but with no success. Eventually, when it believed it was close enough, it gambled on trying to breathe fire at the echidna once more. Knuckles could feel the heat up near his ankles so he took to the air and glided out of the path of the flames. He then ran around the circle and again punched out the small ghost holding the hourglass, allowing light to shine in the room once more.

King Boom Boo was on its last legs. It once again took to the ground, moving faster underneath the surface than the two previous times. Knuckles glided overhead in search of it. When he finally tracked it down, he used his Drill Claw technique, throwing himself towards the ground while spinning like a corkscrew. He dug straight through the ground and yanked out the ghost. It made no attempt to get away. Knuckles gave him one more devastating punch with his spiked fist, sending the ghost flying off of the circular platform and disappearing to the quicksand that Knuckles was just now witnessing.

With the ghost defeated, the torches in the room re-lit themselves and the doors leading into the room reopened. Sonic, Tails, and Amy ran straight in once they opened.

"Knuckles! Are you okay?" Sonic asked.

"Yeah, we thought we heard a fight!" Amy said.

Knuckles started panting. He was just now realizing the eeriness of the last few minutes. "Ghost…" he trembled. "_Huge_ ghost…"

They appeared to be looking at him concernedly before Sonic inconsiderately asked him, "Wait, did you find the keys?"

Tails and Amy gave him disapproving looks, but Knuckles seemed too shocked to mind. "Yeah, just take them," Knuckles told Sonic and handed the keys over to Tails.

"All right then, if you're ready, Knuckles, we should start getting going," Tails said. "The spaceship should be somewhere past that locked door. If we're quick enough—"

"I might not be around to do something?" The three looked around. Dr. Eggman had appeared in a hidden archway in his Egg Walker and was waving at them mockingly.

"Come and get some, Eggman!" Sonic called out to the doctor.

"You may have gotten past King Boom Boo, but I have other, more fun things in store for you. I was looking to get that pest out of the pyramid anyhow." The doctor said. "I think you'll find the Egg Golem much more interesting."

Sonic turned to the other three, saying to them, "Look, you guys should get out of here. Find the spaceship and get it started. I'll take care of Eggy." They nodded and made their way for an exit, leaving Sonic on the circular pathway.

"Did you really think you could get out of here alive, Sonic?" asked the doctor, drawing a look of irritation from his adversary. "I hope whoever had the Chaos Emerald left because I'd be so upset if it were just handed to me this easily."

"Easily?" Sonic asked skeptically. "And what exactly would be responsible for doing that?"

"You'll see. Come out, my servant!"

The Egg Golem came out of the circular gap in the middle of the pathway. It was made out of stone and had a human-shaped body like that of an Egyptian pharaoh. The room, which had to have been about 100 feet high, was just enough to hold it.

"Go and crush that blue hedgehog, Egg Golem!" Eggman commanded.

Sonic at first seemed intimidated by the Egg Golem's size, looking at it with apprehension. He hadn't the slightest idea on how he was going to take it down. He studied it for a split-second. There didn't seem to be any weak points on its body. What about its head? He noticed some kind of mechanical device perched right atop its head. Was that what he had to hit?

Before he had too much time to think, the Egg Golem swung its fist down at him. He made his move quickly. As the Golem's fist came crashing down, Sonic backed up a bit to give himself some space before leaping towards it. He jumped on top of the Golem's fist and propelled himself off of that, giving himself enough height to kick the mechanism on top of the Golem's head.

The Golem collapsed and had to grab onto the pathway to keep from falling completely. Sonic landed behind it safely. He and Robotnik watched as the Golem tried to steady itself while its head spun around madly. Robotnik looked exasperated.

"Sonic must have broken the restraining mechanism when he struck its head," he said worriedly. He then struck the front of his Walker. "Useless piece of trash!" Suddenly, the Golem turned its head in his direction and reached its hand out to grab him. "No, wait! I am your creator! What do you think you're doing? Curse you, Sonic!" Sonic took this as his cue to leave. He was chuckling to himself as he ran out of the room.

He made his way back to the locked door, which had now been opened.

"Primary engine ignition on," he heard over the loudspeakers in this room. The spaceship was just about to take off. "Beginning liftoff countdown: 20…19…18…" Sonic began to run even faster, but was not worried about missing his flight. He located the room where the spaceship was located and saw Knuckles and Amy waiting at the ship's entrance.

"There he is!" Amy yelled. "Get in, hurry!"

With 5 seconds left to spare, Sonic got into the spaceship. Knuckles closed the door behind him. They were just now headed to space, with a couple of hours to go before the cannon was scheduled to fire.


	14. Chapter 13: Cannon Countdown

_Chapter 13: Cannon Countdown_

Liftoff was successful. The spaceship successfully broke Earth's atmosphere, leaving the heroes in space. Sonic, Knuckles, and Amy made their way to the cockpit, where Tails had gotten off of his Cyclone and was now manning the flight controls.

"Didn't take ya long to figure out this thing, huh, buddy?" Sonic asked his best friend, slapping him on the shoulder as he sat.

"Absolutely not, Sonic!" Tails said, still with a tone of exaggerated enthusiasm. He left the shuttle in autopilot and got up to face the others. "We should be good for the rest of the trip." Now turning to Sonic, he said, "By the way, I never got to fully show you my Cyclone." Sonic feigned interest in this and followed Tails to the mech.

"So this is my Cyclone…right here in the front is my Volkan Cannon. I've upgraded it with a bazooka so I can shoot through metal barriers…see the attachment on the back? That fires missiles; I can lock-on to 10 things at once and fire missiles at all of them at the same time!" Amy started to roll her eyes. "I've also got Jet Boosters right along the legs, see? It can sorta fly. It's more like a hover, really…Do you like it? You can sit it in it if you want. I've been working on this nonstop for months!"

Upon overhearing this, Knuckles shifted his attention to the best friends' conversation. "Wait, did you just say that you've been working on this thing 'nonstop' for months?" he asked Tails. Sonic and Amy gave Tails looks of concern, but Tails didn't notice them.

"Yeah, why?" Tails asked.

"So this is all you've been doing and nothing else?" Knuckles asked.

"Pretty much, is there a problem?" Tails responded.

The echidna now looked furious. "You said…you were at airplane conventions…that's why you couldn't come with me to the desert…"

Tails responded with a look of shock and fear. "Well yeah, of course." He stammered. "I mean, that's obviously what I meant," he added, flashing a nervous smile.

Knuckles began to throw a punch at the fox, but Sonic stepped in front of him and held him back. Tails jumped back and fell on his back, causing Amy to run over and kneel over him in concern. He swore that he was never more scared in his entire life. Knuckles, his friend, had just tried to hurt him.

"Whoa, buddy, you've gotta chill," said Sonic as he jostled with Knuckles. Saying this only seemed to anger Knuckles more.

"And YOU!" he screamed to Sonic, as he finally succeeded in pushing the hedgehog off of him. "What's your excuse, pretty boy?"

"Pretty boy? That's low, dude," Sonic replied, genuinely hurt. "Listen. Knux. Just let us explain—"

"I don't think I need explaining!" Knuckles yelled and started throwing punches at Sonic, who dodged them by cartwheeling off to the side. "I was out there, in the blazing hot desert, and you couldn't even find it in yourself to at least keep me company?" He threw more punches at Sonic and missed.

Amy had now gotten up from the ground and had tried to get in between Sonic and Knuckles. "Guys, please don't fight!" she pleaded. "Please don't hurt Sonic, Knuckles, please!"

"And what's your story?" he now was asking Amy. "You'd do anything to cover for your precious Sonic, wouldn't you? Should've known. Should've known you wouldn't really have wanted to spend any of your time with me."

"That's not true!" she shouted, struggling to keep up a tough demeanor.

"All right, Knuckles, don't take it out on Amy!" Sonic interrupted. "She was only trying to help. She was trying to help everyone here. That's the only reason why she's here in this space shuttle with us right now! She only wants to help!" She was beginning to beam at him, and he pretended not to notice.

Just as Knuckles was about to respond to this, they heard a loud crash and felt the shuttle rock. They all lost their balance and found themselves on the ground when the rocking stopped. The ship's controls had now started to alarm; the ship had taken on some damage. Tails got up first and started looking at the front window. He realized that the shuttle had run into some space rocks. The space rocks had gotten there after being blown from the ARK to reveal the Eclipse Cannon.

"Is everyone all right?" Tails asked. The others nodded yes.

Knuckles got up and looked out a side window to see what had caused the crash. Smoke appeared to be shooting out of the front of the shuttle. When he turned his head to look at the rear end of the shuttle, he caught a glint of green flashing near the corner of the window. He realized what it was: a Master Emerald shard.

"Oh no, the Master Emerald pieces!" Knuckles cried out in anguish. "They're flying away all over the place! The crash must've opened up the hatch door, that's where they were!"

"Listen now, let's not panic, Knuckles," said Sonic calmly, but Knuckles couldn't make himself relax.

"What do you mean, 'let's not panic'? The Master Emerald pieces! My entire life revolves around that Emerald, and I worked so hard to find those pieces!" He started to eye the controls before strutting over to them. "I'm turning this ship around, step aside!"

Tails now got up and tried to block the controls. "No, Knuckles, you don't know what you're doing," he told him. "We're really close to landing by the looks of it. We've just gotta land first and then you can go look for the Emerald pieces." But Knuckles had already completely lost his patience. He wasn't going to have any of this. He started to grab at the controls. "Wait—Knuckles, stop! Wait, not _that_ lever, don't touch that one, we'll crash!"

But it was too late. Knuckles pulled the overdrive lever, sending the shuttle zooming across space just outside the ARK and throwing the four heroes to the shuttle's floor. Although the shuttle was fortunate enough not to hit anything, it had passed the ARK's loading dock and was now going in the opposite direction of the Master Emerald pieces. This move hadn't been beneficial for any of the four.

* * *

"Hi, doctor. How's it going down there?" Rouge asked Robotnik over a cell phone from the central control room in the ARK.

"Well…not good," responded the doctor. "You see—how do I explain this? They, erm, escaped."

Rouge was initially alarmed at this, asking him, "What do you mean they escaped?" She realized, however, that this shouldn't have been too unexpected. After all, he had never been successful in defeating his adversaries in the past.

"Well, Rouge, I did everything in my power. I made the base nearly impossible to penetrate. I let ghosts into the base to scare any intruders who made their way in too far. Then, as a last resort, I built a gigantic Egg Golem that I thought for sure would crush them, but it didn't! Then they hijacked my spaceship and they're heading your way now! None of my blasted ideas to stop those beasts ever work!" His voice became angrier with each sentence.

"Doctor, doctor, please. It's okay. I've got it under control. I will personally go after them," she said in an almost hypnotizing tone. He didn't respond to this, so she couldn't be sure of his reaction. "Now doctor, it would really help me if you told me the password for the computer in the central control room, so I can set up the defenses here."

He sighed. "Okay, Rouge. But you must stop them! The password is Maria. I won't take long to get up there myself, so do your best for the time being."

"Thanks doctor, I'll get right on it!" she said eagerly and hung up. "Tricking that old doctor is just too easy," she said proudly to herself.

She walked over to the computer in the middle of the room and studied it for a bit. When active, it buzzes and all kinds of lights start flashing. At that point, it was doing nothing. The console behind the computer contained six of the seven shimmering Chaos Emeralds. She set herself up right in front the computer, which was asking for a username and password.

"Okay, username G. Robotnik, password Maria," she typed quickly. She paused suddenly in thought. "Maria…where have I heard that name before? Oh well, guess it doesn't matter much." The computer started to click and whir before it had fully booted up. She began to type again. "All right, Shadow. Let's find out who you really are."

She searched the space colony's archives to try and find any information on the mysterious hedgehog. She looked through research logs and a specific folder for projects before encountering what she had been looking for: Research Project Shadow. "Well, this looks promising! Research Project Shadow, the Ultimate Life Form!" she said gleefully to herself. She pulled up the project's records and skimmed through them. She found herself shocked at what she had just read.

"What—this can't be right!" she screamed at herself, perhaps hoping she would prove herself wrong. She looked through the details more carefully. There was no question about it. This was the project that produced the Ultimate Life Form. "But if this is it," she said to herself, "then what in the world is Shadow?"

Before she could think too deeply about her discovery, an alert came up on the computer. A video had flashed up onto the screen; a camera had just caught Sonic, Tails, and Amy milling about at the loading docks. They had just landed. What about the echidna? That's suspicious, she thought to herself. She brought up a map of the surrounding area of the colony on the computer and had it find any locations where high amounts of energy were emanating. She found some on some nearby space rocks.

"Master Emerald pieces," she gasped. She already had a few shards from the desert and now more had just popped up seemingly right on her doorstep. "I think the doctor won't mind if I let him take care of his hedgehog problem," she said deviously and made her way out of the control room, heading for the space rocks. Unfortunately for her, she didn't make sure she everything with her before she left. Her walkie-talkie, which was her primary means of communication with the government, lay on its own on the control panel.

* * *

"KNUCKLES, THAT STUPID IDIOT!" Sonic yelled furiously at the top of his lungs. "What in the world did he think he was doing? Trying to take control of the darn shuttle! I'll rip him to shreds when I find him!"

While Sonic was incensed, at the very least, he was in no physical distress. Tails and Amy, on the other hand, were both woozy from the shuttle having suddenly been thrust into overdrive. Knuckles was nowhere to be found. The others assumed he bailed at some point before they docked.

"Sonnnicc, relaaax," Tails grumbled dizzily. "He's gone nooow…we might as well rest ourselves uuuup…focus on the task at haaand…"

"Awww, my fur is such a mess," Amy groaned. "Gosh, do you think there's anywhere here where I could wash up or something? It's so dusty in here."

"Well, this place was shut down around 50 years ago due to a terrible accident, so that would explain the dust," Tails said. "Back in the day, it was the most advanced research facility in the world. A lot of the stuff I've seen is pretty outdated, though, and we haven't even been here long."

"So they just completely abandoned this place?" Amy asked.

"It looks like it," Tails replied. "Whatever that accident was 50 years ago, the government saw it fit to get everyone out of here. Must have been devastating."

Sonic now started to pay attention to the other two. He shouted, "All right, we don't have much time left, we still need to find out how we're going to destroy that cannon!"

"You're right, Sonic, let's get on it!" nodded Tails affirmatively. "Come on over and take a look at this!" From a compartment in his Cyclone, he pulled out a small silver briefcase and set it off to the side. He pulled up a sketch of the colony that he had made on his Cyclone's computer and gestured to the other two to come take a look. "From what I've seen about that cannon is that it seems to be impervious to outside attacks. So it seems our only shot would be to break it down from the inside." He started to point at the briefcase. "You can go and open that up now, Sonic."

Sonic did as he was told. The briefcase was holding a yellow Chaos Emerald. "Nice, Tails! What are we gonna do with it?" he asked. Considering how upset Tails was when he interfered with his last plan, Sonic decided to give his best friend free rein on this one.

"What we need to do is to get to the central control room and place that Emerald with all the other Emeralds that are currently powering the cannon," Tails said.

Sonic and Amy looked at each other in confusion. "Wouldn't that just make the cannon stronger?" asked Amy.

"Aha, it would!" Tails said with a wry grin. "Only that this Emerald isn't the real thing! It's a fake!" While the other two still eyed each other confusedly, Tails pulled out another, identical yellow Emerald from his Cyclone and flashed it at them. They both gasped.

"Wow, Tails, you're a genius!" Amy shouted, causing Tails to blush a little. "They look exactly alike!"

"Thanks Amy," he replied just loudly enough. "Well you see, I created that fake Emerald after researching this real one. I made that fake with the exact same wavelength and properties as the real one although it's not as strong. What it'll do is, it'll make the other six Chaos Emeralds already in the cannon reverse in polarity, causing the cannon to blow up! It's foolproof, I had it tested! Not even a machine will be able to tell the difference!"

He smiled proudly and the other two applauded. "Can't see how this'll go wrong, buddy!" Sonic said, genuinely proud of his young sidekick. "Earth will be safe again in no time!"

"All right, Sonic, you know what to do now!" Tails said. "I'll go try and cut down the colony's power supply. Good luck!"

"Wait Tails, what about me?" Amy asked, wide-eyed. Tails started to feel really bad now. He was just now starting to appreciate all that Amy had been trying to do to help them. The least he could have done was include her in the plan, but there was nothing she could do with the way the plan was currently formulated.

"Sorry, Ames, you're just gonna have to wait up until we're done," Sonic said, frowning, unknowingly saving Tails from having to say something himself.

"Ugh, you guys always have all the fun," she said disgustedly. The other two just looked at each other awkwardly. "Well, what are you waiting for? Save the world, already!" She strutted off angrily. Tails looked guilty, but Sonic just shrugged it off and made his way to the control room, this time somewhat trusting that his best friend would get his job done.

* * *

Back at the base, Robotnik was in his computer room, lamenting his huge failure in trying to stop Sonic and his friends once and for all, when Shadow walked in.

"Oh, hi Shadow, you're here!" Robotnik said embarrassedly, as he had been pouting and close to crying when the hedgehog walked in.

"I heard they got away, doctor," the hedgehog said without a trace of emotion in his voice, making it hard to tell if he was disappointed or not.

"Yes. Yes they did. But that's okay. Rouge is getting ready to stop them. They'll be out of our hair in no time."

"You trusted Rouge with defense?" Shadow asked, causing Robotnik's face to flush.

"She's the only one up there, so…oh no, this was a huge mistake!" the doctor screamed with a tone of desperation and slammed a control panel. Shadow could see huge veins in the back of the doctor's head pulsating. Robotnik swallowed and tried to catch his breath. "All right, this is okay, we're okay! We just need a plan." He went over to his computer and brought up a map of the ARK on the monitor. He started to look for Chaos Emeralds by searching for areas with abnormally high energy readings. He saw three such areas in the ARK, which was strange. One of these was the control room with the six Chaos Emeralds, but that meant that there had to be at least two other Emeralds in the ARK. So where were two other Emeralds coming from if there are only seven in existence?

"Shadow, do you see that too?" he asked.

Shadow took a look at the screen, his facial expression not changing. "Yes. It says there are eight Chaos Emeralds in the colony."

Robotnik began to scratch at his mustache as he thought about why this was the case. It didn't take him long to figure out what was going on. "Unless there is a secret eighth Chaos Emerald that I'm not aware of, then it's obvious what they're doing." He turned and smiled at Shadow. "That clever fox. One of the Emeralds is a fake."

Shadow continued looking at the screen, nodding and accepting this. "Yes, I think you're right, doctor." He looked at Robotnik with a serious look on his face now. "Only problem is, we don't know which one's the fake." Robotnik stopped smiling when he heard this. Shadow continued to look at him intently and said, "I'm ready for whatever you need me to do."

"That's very honorable of you, Shadow, but I believe that I should be the one to tell them the end is near," Shadow was surprised at this, but decided to concede and let the doctor call the shots. Robotnik began to cackle. "It's time to put an end to all of this once and for all!"


	15. Chapter 14: Emerald Business

_Chapter 14: Emerald Business_

At the very least, Knuckles was having relatively little trouble finding the Master Emerald shards. That was really the only positive thing that he could say about the situation.

He had been searching for Emerald pieces on a group of meteors outside of the ARK. It appeared that the ARK's past scientists had been researching these meteors or using them for storage. On the ground was a wide building with four huge metallic rectangular columns that stood about on the corners of a rectangle on top of the building. These columns stretched up about a few hundred feet, Knuckles reckoned, and were connected by beams at every fifty-foot interval. Floating way above the ground due to a lack of gravity were storage containers. The huge ARK could be seen nearby.

With help from his echidna senses, Knuckles found a few of the Master Emerald shards fairly easily. He could feel the presence of other ones, but they seemed to be constantly moving, making them hard to track down. He followed a signal up on top of the building on this meteor, so he climbed on top of it, positioning himself by one of the columns here. The metal floor on top of this building looked like it was made up of four moveable triangles that were currently put together to make one big square door. It looked as if this door could be opened, although Knuckles hadn't the slightest clue how.

He felt the Emeralds' presence nearby; he had to be very close. He looked to his left and to his right. There was nothing but metal. Then he heard someone behind him. He could tell someone had just landed a jump behind him from the sound of shoes hitting the floor.

"Well, hello there, treasure hunter," said Rouge the Bat in a mocking tone. "I see you've been helping me find _my_ Master Emerald."

He turned around to face her. "It's not _your_ Emerald," he grunted threateningly.

"Oh, really? Let's see, I've got some of the pieces right here," she said, pulling out the pieces that she had found both in the desert and in space. "Found them all by myself, fair and square. I think that should make me their true owner."

Knuckles just looked at her disappointedly if anything. "You're a sad creature," he told her, drawing a look of surprise. "You're just greedy. Selfish. What could you possibly do with the Master Emerald, huh? Nothing. It only answers to me. I'd imagine even if you did manage to take hold of it, it'd find its way back to me in the end. You wouldn't understand it, it's like it's got a mind of its own."

Upon hearing this, Rouge just shook her head and chuckled. "Wow, do you really believe all that, you superstitious buffoon?"

"Of course," he responded.

She stopped smiling and now had a look of ferociousness on her face. "Well, then, if I can't talk my way into getting the Emerald, then I guess I'm just going to have to take it from you."

"Good, I'd prefer you try that anyway. Talking to you is a waste of time."

Rouge angrily put away her Master Emerald pieces and the two of them circled around between the metal columns as if they were in an arena. They eyed one another intently, waiting for the other to make the first move. Knuckles decided to rush up to the bat and deliver the first punch. Although Rouge was able to block it, she was still knocked off-balance. She countered with a series of swift but powerful kicks, resulting in Knuckles having to dodge them in every way he could have thought to. He jumped over her sweeping kicks, leapt backwards away from her straight kicks, and ducked under her roundhouse kicks. All of them seemed to miss him by inches.

Just as Knuckles was about to charge her again, the floor underneath began to move of its own accord. The four triangles that made up the floor were starting to recede into the building, revealing that the floor had been covering up a hole that had been drilled straight down into the meteor's core. They both stared down for a moment, noticing the bright, hot magma waiting down beneath them as the doors continued to recede.

Forgetting about one another for a moment, the two each headed for a different column and climbed it until they both were on separate beams. Knuckles wiped his brow and was hunched over with his hands on his knees, apprehensive after nearly falling to his death. But when he looked up, he forgot all about his fear when he saw Rouge waving at him mockingly from a beam way across from the one he was standing on.

To her surprise, Knuckles glided over to the beam on which Rouge was standing and began to throw more punches at her. She was able to get away from this powerful sequence - which culminated in a vicious uppercut - before backing off to give herself some space. They both had to be extremely careful, considering the short length of the beam. She fired back with a back kick which Knuckles blocked, and before he could counter, she tried a sweeping kick that he just was able to jump over.

"Guess I'm not trying hard enough," the echidna said over the roaring of the magma below.

"Not trying?" Rouge asked disbelievingly. "I doubt that. You're covered in sweat," she said, noticing the glistening quality of Knuckles' fur. Angrily clenching his teeth, he backed off towards one of the columns, causing Rouge to smile. "What's wrong? Scared?"

"Take this!" he suddenly pointed and yelled once he was right next to the column. On his command, a bolt of lightning crashed down right above Rouge, who had to dive to get out of the way. She looked up, now annoyed.

"Oh, so we're fighting dirty now, are we?" she asked.

"Well if you're gonna mess around, then so will I!" he called back.

Rouge got back up from the ground and started to charge at him, although she still was making a concerted effort not to fall off the beam. She attempted a flying side kick right to Knuckles' chest, but he avoided it by jumping and latching onto the nearby column. Rouge ended up kicking the column, causing her to crumple to the ground and howl in pain. Already hanging onto the column, Knuckles decided to try and climb up its entire length before Rouge decided that she was going to pull out all the stops.

"Black Wave!" she yelled out, pointing up towards the echidna.

A black vortex appeared right next to Knuckles, who started to lose his grip on the wall. He struggled to get a handle; his feet were pulling away from the column as the vortex tried to suck him in. It took all of his strength to be able to hold on firmly enough to shimmy his way around the column and onto a connecting beam far enough away from the Black Wave.

"So you _are_ more than just a thief," Knuckles grunted agitatedly, glaring at her. She merely shrugged at him before flying in his direction. She landed on the same beam as his, and they stood across from each other once more.

Rouge charged him again, starting with a flurry of spinning kicks. Knuckles hesitated for a moment, pondering whether he should jump or block. Due to his indecision, he had no time to do either of the two. He instead opted to fall off the beam, and he was barely able to grab onto another beam a bit under the first.

Rouge, quickly judging where he had gone, jumped off of the beam herself and tried her downwards corkscrew Drill Drive kick. Knuckles noticed her coming at the last possible moment and, since he was on his knees, had to roll away backwards from the incoming bat. In spite of the force with which she was falling, Rouge was able to land on her feet unhurt, but had momentarily forgotten about her opponent. In that instant, Knuckles capitalized, connecting a low uppercut right to her gut and sending her flying until her back smashed against a column.

Now it was Knuckles again on the offensive, as he didn't wait to charge her again. As Rouge got back up, she narrowly jumped over a powerful straight right from the running echidna, who had to come screeching to a halt to avoid slamming into the column himself. The moment he turned himself around, however, his face was smacked by a roundhouse kick, and he fell limply to the ground.

Without opposition, Rouge jumped onto the closest column and quickly tried climbing up it to its very top, hoping to put herself in a position to try a powerful Drill Drive to finish off the echidna. Knuckles looked up. She was almost there. He leapt up and punched the beam beneath him, sounding off a huge crash that probably could have been heard on the other side of the meteor. The structure rocked and rattled, and the bat was swung around as she held on for dear life. When everything came to a stop, however, she was still hanging on, with the Master Emerald shards in her pockets barely secure.

Looking down on him and grinning evilly, she said, "Aww, I guess that means that the lazy echidna's gonna have to chase me."

Knuckles was about to try the same thing again, but he realized how close the Master Emerald pieces were to falling out of Rouge's pockets and into the lava below. He didn't want to know what would happen if that occurred.

He climbed up the column on the opposite end of the beam that he was standing on and saw Rouge standing on another, more narrow beam that was situated directly above the lava. He stood across from her on the other end of the beam. Neither of them did anything; they just breathed heavily, exhausted from all of their fighting. The moment they both caught each other's eye, though, was the moment that they both snapped.

"Give me back my Emeralds!" Rouge tried to screech over Knuckles' cry of "Stop messing around!"

Rouge shot a distasteful look at him and said, "You call yourself honorable and noble? After attacking a lady? Shame on you!"

"Lady!" Knuckles screamed. "If you're a lady, then I'm the epitome of class!" She pursed her lips and looked away from him, trying to shield her embarrassment. "What kind of lady goes around stealing jewels, anyhow?"

She looked at him with such a fearsome expression that he felt chills. "I've had enough of your nonsense. Those Emeralds are mine, you—!" As she spoke, she tried to charge at him, but lost her footing and started to fall to the lava below. She let out a piercing scream…this was it. She shut her eyes, not wanting to see her fate.

She waited a little while. No pain. Was this how death felt? Like nothing? She didn't really want to, but she opened her eyes, needing to know what was going on. She looked down. There was the lava beneath her. She was shocked. She hadn't fallen in. She didn't think there was a chance that she would be more surprised in her life. But there was. And it came when she looked back up. Hanging off of the beam and grabbing her by the wrist was Knuckles the Echidna, who probably hated her more than anyone else in the world. He saved her life.

He pulled himself and Rouge back up to the beam. Even after both stood comfortably, they each continued to hold the other's hand and look at each other intently. Rouge had never seen this expression on Knuckles' face before. He looked innocent for a change, like he had let his guard down. Knuckles stared at her eyes, which were uniquely colored: a light shade of blue. All of a sudden, they were so... _interested_ in each other. So interested, that they drew in closer and closer to each other…

"Keep your hands to yourself!" Rouge screamed incredulously at the last possible minute, tearing her hand from his. "Don't you dare touch me again!"

Now suddenly just as angry, Knuckles fired back, saying, "That's not the thanks I was expecting from someone whose life I just saved."

"Saved my life? Please. You probably just wanted to hold my hand, you creep!" she said almost playfully.

Now incensed, Knuckles roared, "What do you think? This is some kind of joke?" For once, Rouge had a defeated look on her face. He began to point at her and scream, "Think what you want, okay! Just think what you want!" He took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. Calmly, he continued, "For the record, I wasn't trying to save you. I was trying to save the Master Emerald pieces."

Rouge rolled her eyes and agitatedly folded her arms. There was silence for a while, aside from the continuing roaring of the lava under them.

"I swear, everything that comes out of your mouth just sounds crazy," she said out of nowhere. She dug her hands into her pockets and threw her Master Emerald shards toward Knuckles, who looked puzzled. "Just take them," she said, almost with a commanding tone. "They smell just as bad as echidnas do anyway."

Torn between feeling elated, confused, and furious, Knuckles said, "If that's what you thought, then you should have given them to me in the first place!" He swept all of the pieces into one big pile, then pulled out the pieces that he had and placed them on top of the pile. There was a blinding flash of green. Both of them covered their eyes. When it was safe to look again, they both witnessed the Master Emerald completely restored.

"Ugh, finally!" Knuckles yelled out while rubbing his Emerald. It never looked as beautiful to him as it did just then. He looked just above the Emerald to try and catch a glance of the bat. She noticed this and turned her back to him defiantly.

"I…I'm sorry," Knuckles said reluctantly. "I'm really sorry that I hurt you." He waited a bit for a response, but he didn't get one. Rouge merely continued to stand there with her back turned to him. With this, Knuckles disappointedly turned around and ran off in the other direction, unsure of what he was going to do next.

When Rouge heard him leaving, she turned around and was able to just catch a glimpse of him as he ran off. Knuckles the Echidna, her savior. "I should get going, I guess," she said to herself and started to turn around and run. She took a couple of steps before stopping and turning around again. She saw him gliding across the meteor, his long dreadlocks being pushed upwards by the wind. She batted her eyes and smiled before finally heading off.

* * *

Sonic walked into the central control room, fake Emerald in hand. He walked across the narrow bridge from the door to the pipe-like console in the middle of the room with six of its seven Emerald slots filled.

"All right, Tails, I made it!" Sonic said into a walkie-talkie.

"Okay Sonic, I'm almost at the power supply, but I'll tell you where to put the Emerald right now," said Tails. "Tell me what you see."

"Well, there's this huge…thing right in the middle of the room. The other Chaos Emeralds are here."

"All right, so there should be a place to put the—oh no! Wait, what are you doing? Stop!" Tails started sounding desperate.

"Tails? Tails, what's going on?" he asked. He started to hear someone panicking in the background. He was praying it wasn't Amy.

"Tails, tell Sonic to meet us in the viewing room. Immediately," said a new voice distantly over the walkie-talkie. Eggman's voice. "I think the four of us need to have a chat."

"Four of us? Tails, what's he talking about?"

"Sonic—Sonic, it's Amy. It's—he's—he's got her, Sonic! You need to come, quickly!"

Sonic looked from the walkie-talkie to the fake Emerald. Should he try to do something? The world was literally at stake. But what about Amy? He could hurt her. Kill her. He thought quickly but deeply to himself. "I guess…" he said nervously to himself. "I guess that at least Amy won't be able to say she doesn't mean the world to me." He held onto the Emerald and dashed out of the control room, not waiting a single moment.


	16. Chapter 15: His Last Request

_Chapter 15: His Last Request_

Sonic burst past an open doorway, blew right through a few robots, and sped back the way from which he originally came. G.U.N. — and by extension, the President — seemed to have heeded Sonic's previous cries of innocence; these robots were the same outdated models that Eggman tore apart a few days earlier, meaning that no new robots had been sent to intercept him.

"We're waiting, Sonic!" Eggman called out tauntingly over the space colony's PA system. "Don't worry, it's only her life at stake!'

He dashed through a glowing green tunnel and was surprised to see what appeared to be an orange railing hanging on the ceiling above him. This appeared to be a railing that he would expect to see alongside staircases on the city streets. Not to mention it would be on the ground as well.

In the next room, Sonic might have seriously lost his mind had he not stopped for a split-second of observation. Blocking his path was a blue liquid figure about twice his height. It essentially was all torso with no visible limbs to go with an elliptical metal helmet that almost completely covered what would have been the figure's head. Only its bright green eyes were visible through the helmet. Now if Sonic had not taken any time to think, he might have thought that the monster Chaos had gone mad again and was out to get him. Fortunately, he quickly realized that this was just a robot, a creation of Gerald Robotnik that was running rampant across the colony.

With a quick smash to the head, Sonic took out this Artificial Chaos and moved on, coming across a large lever labeled with an upwards-pointing arrow. Since time was short and there was only a void filled of hazardous green acid ahead of him, Sonic pulled down on the lever.

Without warning, Sonic was thrown upwards towards the ceiling. He had accidentally switched the gravity in the room. What was originally the ceiling was now his floor, and what was originally the floor was now the ceiling. With a loud clank, Sonic smashed back-first into the ceiling, but he was unhurt. Incidentally, however, he now had a way around that pit of green acid, as he was able to cross along the ceiling with ease.

He ran across the ceiling, coming across another Artificial Chaos. It fired green lasers out its eyes and formed long thin arms from its torso to try and trip up the blue hedgehog, but Sonic dodged all of these and took out the robot. A little further ahead, Sonic found another switch, which from his perspective, was also pointing upwards. He threw this switch and this time was ready for the gravity change, as he landed on the original ground without incident.

After passing an old G.U.N. robot and blasting through another Artificial Chaos, Sonic grabbed onto a cord which hoisted him upwards towards the next room. He jumped into this room, only to find that there was nothing there other than three tubes that stretched out towards the ceiling.

"These look like those air tube things at bank drive-thrus," Sonic said to himself. They looked big enough…He could easily fit through one of them. "Am I really considering doing this?" he asked himself, chuckling. The thought of Eggman taking Amy's life, however, while Tails watched helplessly started to eat at him, and he knew this was the only way to go.

At the base of the middle tube was a small glass chamber. Seeing no way to open it, Sonic punched through the glass, allowing himself to be sucked into the chamber and through the tube. He might as well have been being pulled into his own coffin. Spinning his way through the tube, crashing into its walls, and not knowing which way he was going all felt like suicide to him. Yet he got out alive.

When he was forced out of the opposite end of the tube, he found himself in a section of the ARK that he had never seen before. He searched his body, looking for any wounds. He breathed a sigh of relief; there weren't any. He turned around for a second out of a window to see the way from which he came. He saw the tube on the outside of the colony connecting the room he was in to the last room he was in. He didn't know why anybody would need it, but he was glad it was there nonetheless. He just hoped he wasn't going to have to do it again.

He pressed forward, jumping on some G.U.N. beetles and allowing himself to pass over another pit of acid. He continued across the room and encountered another upwards-pointing lever. He pulled it and was sent flying towards the ceiling again.

Moving as quickly as possible, Sonic came across another orange railing which ran above another pit of acid. "So they did know what they were doing," said Sonic to himself. His voice quavered a bit as he spoke, but he was not about to let his nervousness get the better of him.

He jumped off the end of the rail and landed on the next room's ceiling. Unlike the previous rooms, which were brighter and were lit by green lights, this room was dark-walled that glowed a dim yellow. He ran to the end of this room where he found three switches: one pointing to the left, one pointing up, and one pointing to the right.

Sonic looked up towards what originally was the ground and saw nothing but a dark abyss. "Not picking that one," Sonic said of the upwards-pointing switch. He looked to his left and to his right. Neither way looked any more appealing than the other, as he was just going to hit a side wall either way. He decided that he was just going to have to pick one of the two randomly.

"Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a tiger by the—" realizing how dumb this was, and that it was wasting time, Sonic just decided to pick the switch pointing to the left and be done with it. He threw the switch and was flung to the side wall, landing feet first.

Before he was able to find where he was supposed to go next, Sonic realized that two heavy cubical containers had also been thrown by the gravity and were flying towards him. He was just able to somersault his way away from it as it collided with the wall, making a loud thudding sound.

A bit shaken, Sonic took a deep breath as he looked at the containers which nearly killed him. Just then, he heard the doctor laugh from over the PA system. "I'm so glad to see you're making things so very interesting, Sonic!"

"Just wait 'til I get over there, Eggman!" Sonic said in an annoyed tone.

"I wish I could record all that you're doing right now," Eggman said. "If, heaven forbid, you were to perish, I could sell the tape and make billions just off of that! 'Sonic the Hedgehog's Death Tape!' It would be the most popular video of all time!"

Growling through gritted teeth and enraged, Sonic ran across the wall and found another rail. He leapt onto it and began grinding. When he hit a turn on the railing, he triggered another shift in gravity. The floor was actually the floor once again.

Sonic quickly advanced through the ARK, taking down hordes of Artificial Chaos and G.U.N. bots and playing around with the gravity to his advantage. It hadn't taken him too long to get to where he was, he thought to himself, and he was right. It had taken less than four minutes to get from basically one end of the ARK to the other. However, the normally always confident Blue Blur became more unsure of himself than ever before when he got to the final room before getting to the viewing room.

"You've done well to get to this point, Sonic," said Eggman over the PA system. "Unfortunately, you'll never get out of this room alive!" He cackled. Sonic was a bit intimidated, but he figured he had gone through worse before…he just couldn't think of anything worse. "They call it the 'Tetris Room', Sonic. It was designed by my grandfather. It would take a miracle for you to survive this one!"

The name, the "Tetris Room", definitely was fitting. The huge room, which was just about outside in space, contained five distinct blocks each made up of a different color that were suspended in mid-air. There was a lever in front of Sonic that would send him upwards towards the bottom face of the purple block. After the purple block, however, Sonic hadn't the slightest clue as to where he was going to go. There was the green block to the purple block's left. The red block was above the purple block. The blue block was to the right of the purple block, and the yellow block was underneath the blue block. There were so many routes he could only imagine taking. Not to mention, since he was surrounded on all sides by outer space, if he were to try and reach a block and miss…

"You can sit and stare all you want, Sonic," Eggman taunted again. "But if you do, that will seal her fate. She _will_ die." Unbeknownst to Eggman, he had said too much. All he had accomplished by saying this was making Sonic determined. It was as if all the tension had dissipated from his body. He remembered his purpose. And he wasn't going to fail.

He ran up and threw the switch in front of him. He flew up to and landed on the bottom face of the purple block. He ran across the length of the block before getting to another gravity switch that pointed to the right, in the direction of the green block. He threw this switch and landed on the side face of the green block. He made his way forward, making a left turn as he continued following the block's path, and found another gravity switch that pointed upwards. He pulled it and was sent soaring across the entire room towards the side face of the yellow block. So far, so good.

He ran across the side of the yellow block until he came to its very end. He could see the blue block from here. Only an easily jumpable gap separated the two blocks, but Sonic hesitated. First of all, he was feeling a little woozy from all the gravity changes for the first time. In addition, he of course knew that jumping and missing the block would lead to his sure death.

"Feeling edgy, Sonic?" Eggman asked. That was all the motivation Sonic needed. He took two steps backwards before completely launching himself from the yellow block to the blue block. He landed violently, falling to his side and sliding across the side face of the blue block. But at the very least, he did land. Another obstacle overcome.

Sonic got back up and took a full sprint to the end of the blue block, coming to a lever pointing to the right. He pulled it and was sent towards the top face of the yellow block, the gravity once again normal.

No longer wanting to wait around, Sonic moved as quickly as possible, not stopping to think about what he was doing. He hit a gravity switch the sent him from the top of the yellow block to the side of a section of the yellow block that jutted outwards in Sonic's path. Here, he found a railing and rode across it to the green block, and from the green block, he hit a spring which sent him flying off towards the purple block. He took another huge jump from the purple block to the blue block and hit a gravity switch here, sending him back to the purple block.

Eggman remained completely silent as Sonic did all this. Whether this was because he now actually thought that Sonic would succeed or because he assumed that Sonic had already perished was unknown to Sonic. On the purple block, he came across a different kind of switch which lit up when he touched it, but he wasn't quite sure what it did. Not pondering it much more, Sonic moved on, finding another gravity switch. He pulled it and was sent upwards towards the red block for the first time. He saw an Artificial Chaos immediately upon landing and took it out before finding another gravity switch that sent him straight down to the ground.

He had almost made it. He could see the door to the next room right in front of him, but it seemed to be protected by some kind of artificial liquid-like cover. The cover glowed green and swirled, reminding Sonic of the acid he had seen in previous sections of the ARK. For this reason, he did not, under any circumstances, want to touch it. Instead, he turned around and looked for another way in. On his way back, he was startled by the appearance of a rocket from the ground.

"A rocket? That's convenient," Sonic said. He didn't realize it at the time, but the mysterious button he had pressed earlier activated this rocket's appearance. Noticing a green button alongside the rocket, Sonic pressed it and sent the rocket flying. It smashed hard into a red circle in the middle of the green artificial cover, resulting in a loud crash. The cover disappeared, but reappeared right after. Then it disappeared again, but reappeared right after again.

"C'mon!" Sonic yelled agitatedly, biting his bottom lip. It kept blinking. And blinking. Then it stopped. He breathed a sigh of relief. He was able to pass through.

* * *

Robotnik sat in his Egg Walker with his left hand hidden under the controls and his right hand with a pistol, which was pointed at Amy, who was trembling to his right. 33 minutes remained before the Eclipse Cannon was scheduled to fire. Across from him in the ARK's viewing room was Miles "Tails" Prower, who stood apprehensively, waiting and praying that Sonic would come and fix things again.

"Hmm, it's been a little while," Robotnik said to them with an evil grin. "Maybe he's not as fast as we think…or maybe he won't make it at all."

"Shut up! Just SHUT UP, you!" screamed Amy hysterically. "Sonic WILL make it!"

Coming excruciatingly close to smacking her across the face with the pistol, Eggman shouted, "I didn't ask for your opinion, girl!" She covered the side of her face with her hands quickly and didn't move them even after he decided not to make contact with her.

An awe-struck Tails merely sat in the Cyclone and watched. His plan was a disaster. The planet's only hope now was that Sonic would get there quickly and figure something out because Tails sure wasn't doing that very well.

They suddenly heard the sound of a metal door opening from behind Tails. Tails turned around in his Cyclone to get a better look. Slowly walking through the open doorway was Sonic the Hedgehog in all his glory.

"Started the party without me, doc? That wasn't very nice," he told him, flashing his trademark smile.

Eggman merely glared at him and said, "Let's just get down to business, Sonic." He thrust his gun arm forcefully in Amy's direction to try and accentuate the danger she was in. The girl hedgehog started to sob as she stared down its barrel. "I want you to hand over the Chaos Emerald slowly. Then we'll talk about your girlfriend."

Sonic pulled out the fake yellow Emerald and stared at it for a moment. _Hand over the fake Emerald? He'll do our job for us! _He thought to himself gleefully.

Before he did anything, he glanced over at Tails, looking for permission to continue. When their eyes met, Tails gave him an approving nod. Sonic then turned his attention back to the doctor, who started to gesture to a gray circle in the middle of the room. The entire floor, other than this circle, was made of glass and the outside of the colony could be seen through this glass.

"Put the Emerald down right there and back off," Robotnik commanded.

Sonic had a conniving smile on his face as he began to do what he was told. He strutted confidently over to the circle, Emerald in hand. "I guess this means you've turned into a big time villain now, doctor!" he said with a hint of sarcasm.

He walked onto the circle, bent down, and was ready to place the Emerald onto the ground slowly, just as he was told. As he was doing this, Sonic quickly peeked upwards to get a glimpse of the doctor. He had a diabolical look on his face. He pulled out his previously hidden left hand: he was holding a remote. It chirped when the doctor gave it a press. Suddenly, a tall cylindrical capsule shot down from above and surrounded Sonic. All but Eggman gasped. Sonic was trapped.

"Walk onto the circle...I cannot believe you fell for that," Eggman said, shutting his eyes and shaking his head from side to side, albeit while smiling.

Sonic, in desperation, tried to break out of the capsule by running his shoulder into it, but it didn't work. Amy started to cry convulsively and Tails, once again, was reduced to watching in shock.

"Did the three of you really think you could fool me with a fake Emerald?" he asked.

Without thinking, Tails asked with a defeated look on his face, "How did you know that Emerald was a fake?"

"TAILS!" Sonic turned and screamed angrily at him.

Robotnik laughed evilly. "I didn't, fox boy. But thanks to you, I do now."

Tails' face turned white and felt as if he were completely paralyzed. He had given the plan away. Everything had been a total failure. Now because of him, the Earth was going to be destroyed and his best friend was going to be killed.

"Are you ready to go on a little space ride, Sonic?" Eggman asked. "Once the capsule clears the colony, BAM! No more Sonic the Hedgehog!"

Sonic continued to try and muscle his way out of the capsule, but it was no use. He wasn't getting out. His fate seemed sealed.

"Any last words, Sonic?" the doctor asked.

As much as he didn't want to admit it was over, Sonic knew in his heart that he didn't want to leave without saying goodbye. He first looked at Amy with a grave look on his face. "Amy…I just want to let you know…that I know that you do _really_ care for me." She began to sob even harder. She now realized that Sonic had indeed heard what she had said after she released him from his prison cell on Prison Island. "I'm gonna need you to take care of yourself from now on, though, okay?" She got down on her knees and buried her hand in her hands, now crying uncontrollably.

Sonic now turned to Tails. "It's all on you now, buddy. The fate of the world's in your hands." Now it was Tails' turn to start to cry. "Tails? What's wrong, buddy, don't cry! I need you to be strong!"

Trying to speak through his sobs, Tails answered, "It's all m-my f-f-fault."

Sonic looked back at him reassuringly. "None of it's your fault, Tails. It was a great plan. You're the smartest guy I know…and you're my best friend. I love you, Tails. Now go kick this guy's fat behind!"

"Is that all?" an annoyed Eggman asked.

Sonic looked at him furiously. "Tails won't let you get away with this."

The doctor chuckled. "We'll see." Without warning, Eggman hit another button and sent Sonic off. The capsule shot through the circle in the ground and blasted off into space.

As the capsule flew out, Sonic tried once more to try and break out, but to no avail. Tired and emotionally drained, Sonic was about to resign to his fate when he remembered something. He looked at the fake Chaos Emerald he had placed on the ground next to him. _The exact same wavelength and properties as the real one_ was what Tails said. He picked it up. Could he do this? It was his only shot. He could still live…

Back in the colony's viewing room, Eggman, Tails, and Amy watched as the capsule jetted out in the direction of Earth and exploded. Sonic the Hedgehog was dead.

"Sayonara, Sonic the Hedgehog," Robotnik said proudly.

"SONIC!" Amy wailed and sobbed some more. Robotnik flipped his Egg Walker around and faced Tails.

"I believe that _we_ now have some unfinished business to take care of, fox boy. Hand over the real Chaos Emerald and I'll let you go. That's a promise."

Although there were tears still in his eyes, Tails looked up with a malicious look on his face, which greatly startled the doctor. "This is the first time Sonic has ever directly trusted me with something," he said confidently. "And I don't plan on letting him down."

The doctor looked at him confusedly at first and then angrily. "All right, then. If you won't hand them over, I'm taking them! No mercy!"

There was nothing else that could be done. There was no more fake Emerald, no more Sonic. In a few short minutes, Earth would be no more. The least Tails could do for his best friend was to defeat the man responsible for his downfall.


	17. Chapter 16: Last Stand

_Chapter 16: Last Stand_

Tails and Eggman strutted around in circles in the ARK's viewing room, watching each other in their respective mechs and waiting for the other to make a move. Tails stared furiously at the doctor with still-teary eyes while Eggman looked back at him angrily. Away from the action, Amy was on her knees staring out of the room's window, watching as the debris from Sonic's exploded capsule scattered across space.

"Are you absolutely sure you want to do this, Tails?" the doctor asked with an air of confidence. "I don't want to do what I'm about to do to you, but I will if I must."

Truthfully, Robotnik's show of confidence was merely a façade. His previous loss to Tails at Prison Island stuck out in the back of his mind. He would have preferred to have not needed to resort to a confrontation with the fox for the final Emerald, but with next to no time remaining before the cannon fired, he had no choice.

Meanwhile, Tails, his face still glistening with tears, sat in his Cyclone with an uncharacteristically self-assured face. He wasn't planning on losing. Sonic's death just gave him all the more reason not to.

"You've gone too far now, Eggman!" he shouted, unable to think of something that Sonic would have said in a similar situation.

Tails took the first shot, firing a laser at the doctor's Egg Walker. Robotnik dodged this and returned with some cannon fire, but since he started moving the Walker so abruptly, he had zero control on where his shots were going, and he completely missed with every single one.

Suddenly alert to the frenzy behind her, Amy turned around and tried to cover herself by putting her right hand over her head. She wiped her tear-strewn face with her other hand, and was still crying softly over Sonic in spite of the fact that there was a battle going on around her.

Tails continued to fire laser after laser at Eggman, who was having some difficulty avoiding them due to their sheer quantity. Eventually, one did connect with the Egg Walker as the doctor ran right into it, choosing too late to turn around. The impact rocked the mech to such an extent that the remote that Robotnik had been using flew out of his hands and broke when it hit the ground, resulting in capsule after capsule shooting down in the middle of the room.

Eggman fired a few lasers at Tails and quickly sprinted off to the side in preparation for a counter-attack. All but one of the lasers was aimed directly at the Cyclone, so Tails elected to jump over it and fire more lasers at the spot where he thought the doctor would be all in one motion. However, since the doctor had already vacated the spot, there was no need to dodge anything, and with the fox off-balance, he was able to take a free shot.

"I'm not missing this time!" he shouted as he hit one of the buttons on the Walker's controls. Tails could hear the mech humming. The sound was familiar. It was charging up to fire another Power Laser.

Tails only had a second to move and he had nowhere to go. There was the window overlooking Earth to his right and capsules flying down next to him on his left. He was about to get decimated, to follow in his best friend's footsteps…

Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Amy swooped in, smashing the Egg Walker on the side with her Piko Piko Hammer as hard as she could, spinning the mech a quarter-turn and resulting in the laser never firing.

The doctor was outraged. He turned his Walker back around and gave the hedgehog such a furious look that she froze right where she was. "I'm not about to let _you_, of all the creatures in this universe, deny me from attaining what I worked so hard for!"

He charged up the Power Laser again, with Amy at point-blank range. She looked straight at the Walker as it started to hum. Her hammer dangled innocently from her hand and dropped to the ground. She waited what felt like ages to be dealt the fatal blow. Eventually, she was hit, but definitely not as hard as she thought she would be and definitely in the wrong place.

Amy, somehow, was being pulled off the ground. She watched as the laser zoomed beneath her. She was able to look at the spot where she stood before and could only imagine what would have happened if she were still there. She shook her head wildly just to make sure she wasn't dreaming; she wasn't, she was alive. She had been hit on the right by something, and when she looked over in that direction, she realized what had happened. Tails had jumped out of the Cyclone and he himself grabbed her.

Tails carried her as he flew around the room, well out of the reach of Eggman's laser. The doctor tried as hard as possible to turn the Walker and point it upwards to try and reach the two of them, but it was of no use. He had only designed the laser to fire straight ahead, not upwards.

After the laser attack ceased, it once again left the Walker in a weakened state. Tails had enough time to put Amy back onto the ground, jump into his Cyclone, and pummel the Walker with lasers and cannon shots until black smoke flew out of every place that it could have possibly flown out of. When Tails stopped, the Walker crumpled to the ground, and was for the moment, of no use to anyone. The doctor crawled out of the fallen mech and just laid with his back on the ground in defeat.

The fox, in his Cyclone, marched up to the doctor and looked him the eyes, ready to deliver the final blow. But Eggman had something to say.

"Wait, Tails, is this really what you want to do?" Eggman asked. "Kill me? Is this what Sonic would have wanted you to do?"

Tails' eyes darted away from Eggman's and moved to the side. The doctor seemed right. This wasn't what Sonic would have done at all…but he wasn't about to just let him get away with all of this, was he? He searched inside of himself for a while, trying to find an answer.

"As much as I'm going to hate myself for this," Tails began, "you're right. This isn't what Sonic would want. I still have the Emerald. I did what I had to do."

And with that, Tails dismounted from the Tornado, leaving a relieved Eggman on the ground with a huge grin on his face. Tails turned and moved towards Amy, who just stared at him as if she were in shock.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

Without warning, Amy leapt at him and threw her arms around his neck, catching him in a huge embrace. Initially unsure of how to respond, Tails hesitantly put his arms around her and patted her on the back as she started to sob again.

"Y-you saved my life, Tails," she said through the sobs.

He had, he thought to himself. He had also defeated Eggman again when it mattered most. He should have been reveling in his accomplishments. But he wasn't. And he couldn't. Not without his best friend.

* * *

Somewhere on the outskirts of the ARK walked Knuckles the Echidna, who was searching for a way inside the colony.

He looked around in every direction. There was no telling where an entrance would be. Right then, it appeared that he was on a walkway towards the exterior of the Eclipse Cannon, which he supposed was for the scientists, should they have needed to do some repair work.

He walked silently and unassumingly, hoping to find a way inside and to get home from there. That is, provided that the others had found a way to stop the cannon. He suddenly was starting to feel extremely guilty for abandoning them and leaving them to execute their plan on their own.

All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, Knuckles started to feel something stir around inside of him. "This…this is some strange energy," he said to himself. It was a similar sensation to what he would expect from the Master Emerald if it were in use. But he knew for a fact that he wasn't using the Master Emerald for anything at that moment so it had to be something else.

Then, just as suddenly as he felt the energy, a flash of white light appeared in front of him with a deafening bang. It can't be, he told himself. Floating lifelessly from the light was Sonic the Hedgehog, who was gripping the fake Chaos Emerald. The light then disappeared, dropping Sonic face-first to the ground. He wasn't moving.

The echidna quickly rushed over to Sonic and got down on a knee right next to him. "Sonic? Hey, Sonic?" he asked, starting to shake the hedgehog. Sonic gave a cough. He was alive. Weak, but alive. He slowly opened his eyes and rolled over onto his back, staring upwards at a concerned Knuckles.

"Where are we?" he asked weakly.

"Somewhere outside the colony," Knuckles responded. "Are you, okay? You literally just appeared out of thin air! What happened?"

Sonic lifted up his head to look at the fake Emerald in his left hand. "Chaos Control," he told Knuckles. "I used Chaos Control."

"Chaos Control?" Knuckles asked with a tone of confusion. Sonic realized that he had never talked about Shadow's teleportation ability with Knuckles before.

Sonic recounted his story to Knuckles. He was in the capsule being launched in the direction of Earth, with essentially a zero percent chance of survival. But before it was too late, he realized that there was one thing he could do. It was something that he had never even tried to do before. Chaos Control was what Shadow called it. Twice Sonic tried it; it didn't work. When he tried it for the third time, emotion took over. He screamed the words "Chaos Control" so loudly and so forcefully that it was almost like he had become one with the Emerald. As if the Emerald was willing to do his bidding.

Sonic could hear the capsule's glass breaking just before it happened, but it did do what it was told, and just at the right time. It transported Sonic out of the capsule. It didn't matter where, just someplace safe. He felt as if he had been pushed through one of the colony's air tubes again as he traveled from the capsule to his destination, which explained why he was feeling so weak.

"I hope you're not messing with me, Sonic," Knuckles told him almost threateningly. "I hope this isn't just to get me to say I believe in something so ridiculous."

Sonic laughed. "Why would I be joking at a time like this? I mean, the world's about to end!"

Then he remembered. The world was about to end. He still hadn't done anything about the cannon firing. He tried to get to get on his feet, but he would have fallen down in doing so had Knuckles not been there to catch him.

"Whoa, easy, Sonic! You're definitely not strong enough to do much right now!"

"No, Knuckles! The world's at stake! That cannon's still gonna fire! As long as I can stand, I can do something!" He steadied himself and pushed the echidna off of him. Knuckles just stood and looked at him. This was going to be one of those moments where Sonic just takes over the situation. "How much time do I have left?"

"Err, not too long. I'd say a little less than 30 minutes."

"That's plenty of time." Sonic took a look at the fake Emerald. Then he looked around him to get a better idea of where he was. "Where are we now, exactly?"

"Well, it seems like this path ahead of us leads to the outside of the cannon."

"Good, that's where I'm going."

"You're crazy! In your condition?"

Sonic narrowed his eyes at him. Knuckles stayed silent. "Yeah, I'm gonna see what I can do from there. I'm just gonna ask one thing of you, Knuckles, can you promise to do it for me?" Knuckles nodded. "Try to get into the colony and help out Amy and Tails. They're alone with Eggman. I'll see you when this is all taken care of."

Sonic staggered his way down the pathway, clearly in bad shape, although he was still faster than most in this state. Knuckles did little more than reach out an arm to try and stop him, but he knew that any attempt he made to stop the hedgehog would be useless. It was Sonic being Sonic. He set a goal, and now he was going to fulfill it.

* * *

Rouge was starting to feel increasingly ashamed for deciding not taking the rest of the Master Emerald shards for herself. She was beginning to doubt her status as the world's greatest treasure hunter before she realized that there were six Chaos Emeralds pretty much waiting for her in the ARK's central control room.

"Legend has it, when someone obtains all seven of the Chaos Emeralds, they can have anything they possibly want," Rouge reminded herself. "Who needs the Master Emerald? I have almost all of the Chaos Emeralds just waiting to be stolen!"

She ran through the ARK in the opposite direction that Sonic went when he was trying to make his way to the viewing room. It didn't really strike her as odd that these sections of the ARK were previously filled from wall to wall with the G.U.N. robots that Sonic ended up destroying. When she got to the control room, she expected it to be empty, save for the six Chaos Emeralds in the console in the center of the room. She did find the Emeralds there, but she also found that she wasn't alone.

"Hello, Rouge," said Shadow the Hedgehog, who was waiting in front of the Eclipse Cannon's controls.

Rouge gasped. "Shadow? What are you doing here?"

"The doctor left to try and stop our little nuisances," he told her. "He did pretty well, too. He finally defeated that blue hedgehog," he said with a hint of disappointment, having seen the hedgehog perish in the capsule's explosion. He had wanted to defeat Sonic for himself. "But enough about me. What about you? I expected you to be here when I first got here, figuring that you were doing everything you could to stop our intruders."

"I was, but—"

"But what? Got distracted by a bit of high energy readings on the space rocks on the outside of the colony?" On the computer behind him, Shadow pulled up a log of how the computer had been being used for the past few hours. He pointed at one entry in particular. "Two hours ago, someone in this room found some interesting energy readings on the outside of the colony. Seeing as how the doctor and I were still on Earth, I think we know who did that."

Rouge glared at him, feeling somewhat betrayed. "All right, so I left the colony pretty much defenseless for a few minutes to go look for some Master Emerald pieces. The doctor took care of it, right? No harm, no foul."

Shadow grinned wryly at her. "You're right. I shouldn't have felt so upset. Except that there seems to be a little more to you than meets the eye, Rouge the Bat, government spy!" He picked up her government-issued walkie-talkie from off the cannon's controls. Her jaw nearly dropped to the ground when she saw it. "So, was stealing the Emeralds your idea? Or was it the President's?"

Surprised as she was by this revelation, Rouge still knew that she had one possible move left to make. Now herself grinning, she replied, "So you did your homework, then? That makes two of us."

"Oh, yeah? What's that supposed to mean?" Shadow asked derisively.

"I mean that, _you_, Shadow the Hedgehog, also are not what you say you are," she said, a devious smile appearing on her face. "I believe if you check your little log again up there, you'll see that _someone_ was doing a little research on an experiment performed 50 years ago on this colony. They called it Project Shadow, in an attempt to create the Ultimate Life Form. I printed out my findings right here," she said, pulling out a few sheets of folded paper. Shadow tried keeping his face expressionless, but nonetheless, he was still extremely worried about what she had discovered.

Rouge unfolded one of the sheets of paper. She looked down at it and smiled even more devilishly than she had before. Then she turned the sheet around towards Shadow, watching his face to try and gauge his reaction. "Now, I came up with this picture. _This_ is the Ultimate Life Form named Shadow. But then again, if this is Shadow…then who, exactly, is standing right in front of me?"

Shadow broke from his stoic demeanor and started clenching his teeth. He could see it. It wasn't him on the paper. It was a huge lizard-like creature. He stepped over to her slowly and grabbed the paper from her hands, tearing it up and tossing it to the black abyss below. For a moment, it appeared that he wasn't finished, that he was going to take it out on Rouge, but all of a sudden, he heard an alarm blare from behind him. He turned around to face the monitor behind him. The word "WARNING" had popped up on in the monitor in huge, red letters.

"Warning? What could possibly be going wrong now?" Shadow shouted. He ran up to the computer and checked out the warning. Something was heading for the front of the Eclipse Cannon, and it was moving fast. "What? What could possibly be moving towards the cannon at that speed?"

"That must be Sonic," said Rouge. "There's only one other thing that can move that fast, and I'm standing here with him," she said, winking at him. He wasn't flattered.

"The blue hedgehog's dead! I saw it with my own eyes! He was in a capsule, and it exploded out in space! Even if he had found a way out of the capsule, he would have burnt out somewhere—"

"We've been in a similar situation," she said, trying to remind him of their escape from Prison Island. He was reminded of an escape, but it wasn't that one. He remembered seeing Maria for the last time and somehow surviving.

"I have to go," he said. "I'm going to stop whoever this is. Everything will go as planned. The doctor will come in here and place in the seventh Emerald any minute now. If you know what's good for you, you'll leave everything right where it is."

He walked past her down the narrow walkway leading from the controls to the exit. Before he left, Rouge called out to him once more. "But do you actually believe that you're the _real_ Shadow?"

"No doubt," he answered without hesitation.

"I mean, even your memories…they might not even be real."

He looked down solemnly and paused for a moment. Then, rather dejectedly, he told her, "Even if my memories aren't real, I know what I am. I know who Shadow the Hedgehog is. And I will fulfill my promise to Maria. Nothing else matters to me anymore."

Without even stopping to look at the bat, he left. Rouge was surprised that he had trusted in her to leave the Emeralds where they were. She took one last despondent look at them. She had put in so much work: turning in favors, gaining trust, convincing her superiors that she was doing something legitimate for the country's sake. But after all of that, it turned out that she was going to end it all empty-handed.


	18. Chapter 17: End of the Road?

_Chapter 17: End of the Road...?  
_

_Shadow dashed through the runways that circled the outside of the ARK. These runways were supposed to be for space rovers carrying supplies to and from different sections of the space colony. They ran entirely around the colony's perimeter, shaped almost like a bolt. The protruding section of the runway was meant to encircle the Eclipse Cannon. On this day, unlike other days, this runway was to be used for training._

_Professor Gerald, like he had a few times before in the past, designated these runways as Shadow's personal playground. The runways stretched for miles and were wide enough to allow for Shadow to run uninhibited in a manner that could not be replicated anywhere else on the colony's limits. During the past few times where Shadow ran through the runways, the space rovers remained there, going through a normal day's work. Today, however, the professor had the runways cleared for just a few hours, as he planned on pushing Shadow to his limits._

_For his part, Shadow had never before been confronted with this much freedom. He could only go so fast through the inside of the ARK and on the runways when there were other things going on there. Now, he was able to run at full speed._

"_You're doing great, Shadow!" the professor said through a walkie-talkie to the hedgehog. "How are you feeling? Tired yet?"_

"_Never," Shadow said with a scoff, although a pleased smile did appear on his face. He wasn't known to show much emotion, but he had to admit to himself that this was an exciting opportunity. This was a perfect chance for him to finally prove – to himself, if not anybody else – that he had superior abilities._

_He was about a quarter of the way around the runway and definitely was not disappointing. On and on he went, not missing a stride and not breaking a sweat. Shadow couldn't help but think that this was a perfect day. Nothing could have ruined it for him. Even when the Artificial Chaos tried._

_Shadow and Gerald didn't know it when they started, but a few dangerously violent Artificial Chaos prototypes had broken loose almost halfway down the runway near the tip of the Eclipse Cannon. Gerald figured it out just before Shadow got to that point and was relieved. He had not planned on pushing Shadow _that_ hard._

"_Shadow, there's been a bit of a disturbance up ahead," Gerald said. "I'm really sorry to do this, but I think we're going to need to cut today's session short."_

"_What?" asked a shocked Shadow. "Disturbance? I think I can handle a disturbance."_

"_That's out of the question, Shadow," said the professor admonishingly. "There's no need for you to do anything more anyway, you've already surpassed all expectations for today."_

_Determined not to let anybody stop him – even if it was his creator – Shadow pretended he had heard nothing. He continued on. At the very least, he wanted to see what could possibly be such a threat to him that they would be stopping._

"_Shadow? Shadow, did you hear me?" Gerald started to ask, but Shadow again chose not to respond. "I've already told you to stop! I'm forbidding you to continue!" Shadow, again, remained silent, and kept on running._

_Before long, Shadow could see the hordes of Chaos clones ahead of him. They came in various shapes and sizes. Shadow had seen two of various kinds of Artificial Chaos clones before, as he had seen Gerald working on them. He recognized several of the large, floating, spherical clones as well as many of the smaller, upright standing clones. There were a few there that he had never seen before, however. One of them was a spider-like creature, with its brain in its center and with several tentacles wriggling from the center. Another one of the types of clones was a four-legged clone in the shape of a boar. There were several other kinds of dilapidated clones with irregular body types. None of the clones showed any kind of patterned movement and seemingly only ran in circles, stopping only to attack each other._

_Shadow, in spite of the orders that he was receiving to stop, fearlessly pressed on and blasted right through the first wave of Artificial Chaos, none of which had expected the attack. Once the rest of the clones turned their attention to Shadow, though, his situation became dicey._

_He jumped upwards and kicked through the heads of two upright standing Artificial Chaos before coming back down and stomping on a spider-like clone. He drilled a few more of the clones with a flurry of kicks, but at that point, too many of them had converged on him all at the same time. He tried fending all of the clones off, but there were just too many of them. Eventually, one of the spherical Chaos formed a pair of tentacles that wrapped around the hedgehog's legs and yanked him down to the ground, causing him to land crashing on his head._

"_Shadow? Are you okay?" Gerald asked, still persisting in trying to get Shadow to answer him. "Have you seen the Artificial Chaos? Please say something. Please tell me you didn't go anywhere near them."_

_Although Shadow this time desperately wanted to respond, he obviously couldn't due to the situation he was in. There were so many Chaos coming in all at once and his options seemed limited. He had wanted to ask for the professor's permission before he tried it, but he didn't appear to have any other choice._

_Shadow frantically reached toward the golden bracelet around his left wrist with his right hand, trying to move as quickly as possible before the Artificial Chaos ripped him apart. He pressed his thumb and index finger against opposite sides of the bracelet. It started to glow a bright gold color and it expanded, allowing it to slide off of his wrist and to the floor. He quickly did the same with the other bracelet._

"_CHAOS BLAST!" he screamed without hesitation. He could feel enormous amounts of energy welling up inside of him. It was a fleeting but intense feeling; for a moment, his skin felt as if it were bubbling and his insides felt like they were on fire. But just as quickly as this sensation came about him, he felt a release. All of that energy shot out of his body and flew out in every direction. The Artificial Chaos that were caught in the line of fire were either sent flying out into space or exploded right on the spot. He cleared the runway of clones entirely, although he felt extremely exhausted afterwards. He felt like closing his eyes and trying to sleep, but he didn't even have the energy for that._

"_Shadow, answer me! What was that?" called the professor over the walkie-talkie._

_Shadow reached down and grabbed the device, which amazingly, was not destroyed in the blast. "Our Chaos problem has been dealt with," he said._

* * *

Memories were catching up with Shadow every day, it seemed. It didn't feel too long ago that he was right here on this runway, in combat for really the first time in his life. The ARK's runway in the present day was just as deserted as it was then. He remembered taking off his bracelets, which unleashed his full potential. He had never taken them off on any other occasion. He decided it was too violent, too dangerous, and too tiring.

Then again, there was what Rouge said. _His memories might not even be real._ He scolded himself in his head for even considering the possibility, but when he took everything in consideration, it did seem like she could be right, even if it was a slim possibility. But then why was he here if it wasn't real? What purpose was he trying to serve if he wasn't actually who he thought he was? He decided not to worry too much about it and just focus on the task at hand.

All he knew was this: someone was headed for the tip of the Eclipse Cannon. Granted, he had no clue what this person would do, but Shadow wasn't going to take a chance. Everything needed to go as planned. He had brought a walkie-talkie with him as he ran on the runway and had tried to contact Dr. Robotnik. He was wondering why it was taking him so long to procure the final Chaos Emerald, but he decided to trust in him. Shadow figured that if Robotnik could just put the final Emerald in place, whatever this mystery person was trying to do would be useless.

Shadow estimated that he was a few miles from the tip of the cannon when he saw the source of his problems. There it was, standing right in front of him on the otherwise empty runway. Shadow started to slow down and eventually could only get himself to walk towards it. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Sonic the Hedgehog was still alive.

Sonic stood slightly hunched over with his hands on his hips. He was panting heavily. Normally, he could have run the distance that he did fairly easily, but the combination of his weakened physical condition and the mental distress that he was in had badly fatigued him. Even though there was only about 5 minutes left before the cannon would fire, he decided that it would be best to regain some energy for the stretch run. He was about to start running again, but he heard a voice behind him.

"You never cease to surprise me, blue hedgehog," said Shadow with a hint of frustration. "Maybe my eyes were deceiving me, but I'm positive you were just blown to pieces not too long ago."

Sonic turned around and looked at him. For the first time in a while by his standards, Sonic smiled. "What can I say?" he replied. "I die hard!"

They both started walking in the cannon's direction, with Shadow looking at Sonic and scowling and with Sonic merely returning a huge grin.

"I actually have to thank you," Sonic said. He pulled out the fake yellow Emerald and waved it in front of his face. "I wouldn't have gotten out of that capsule without stealing one of your moves."

Now incensed, Shadow yelled, "Are you mocking me? There's no way you could have used Chaos Control! There's no way that you're physically capable of performing it! Not to mention, that Emerald is fake!"

The two started running, but not yet at full speed. "Well, you may be the 'Ultimate Life Form'," Sonic said, gesturing with his hands to indicate that he wished for quotation marks to be placed around Shadow's self-given title, "but I don't think you're giving me enough credit, my friend! I'm pretty skilled too, y'know!"

Shadow clenched his teeth and began to speed up a little more. "Just what are you, anyway?" he asked Sonic.

"Just a guy that loves adventure!" Sonic fired back. "I'm Sonic the Hedgehog!"

"Very well," Shadow said resignedly, fed up with the conversation. He started to run at full speed and Sonic did the same, as he seemed to no longer to feel any pain. "Know this, blue hedgehog," Shadow continued. "I can't let you live. The doctor may have missed his opportunity, but I won't. Your adventuring days are coming to end."

Shadow looked forward as he ran, lacking any facial expression. Meanwhile, Sonic, keeping up with him stride for stride, could only smile. He had his head turned to his right, waiting for Shadow to flinch. He laughed to himself a little after seeing how serious the black hedgehog looked.

It became evident to both hedgehogs that one was not going to beat the other in a footrace to the cannon. The runway was fairly wide, but not too wide. One shove could send one of them flying off into the depths of space. Then again, if one of them tried to do so and missed, the other would break free and gain a wide lead over the other. So for about a minute or so, both hedgehogs just tried to run as fast as they could, hoping that the other would falter on his own. Neither one did.

After Shadow had estimated that they were about halfway from the point that they started to the cannon, he finally took a look to his left at Sonic as they ran. Sonic, who had been looking forward previously, caught Shadow glancing at him from the corner of his eye and started to chuckle just loudly enough for Shadow to hear.

"What's so funny?" Shadow demanded to know.

Sonic merely looked at Shadow with that same wry smile. Shadow couldn't understand it. How could he be smiling at a time like this?

Fed up with his blue counterpart, Shadow decided it was time to make a move. He looked back forward and tried to put on the same stoic face that he had on before. Then, without warning, he used his Air Shoes to move himself in a skating motion to the left, catching Sonic completely by surprise. By the time he realized what Shadow was doing, it was too late. Shadow rammed into Sonic's right side, knocking him to the ground, causing him to fall and roll off to his left, eventually sending him flying off the runway.

Shadow skidded to a stop once he saw the Blue Blur fly off the runway, screaming at the top of his lungs. He had finally done it. Sonic the Hedgehog was not going to be a problem for him anymore. Any second now, the doctor would have that last Chaos Emerald and place it where it needed to be. Then, his plan would truly commence.

He was about to pull out his walkie-talkie to try and contact Robotnik again before he heard Sonic's voice yell. "CHAOS CONTROL!" Sonic screamed. Following this command, Shadow heard a bang. It was that all too familiar sound of a successful Chaos Control. Shadow waited for a split-second. Could he have been telling the truth? Sonic was able to use Chaos Control this whole time? Although it seemed like an eternity, Shadow waited a few seconds, wondering to himself that if it had worked, Sonic should have appeared around him somewhere.

Right on cue, Shadow heard another loud bang and was momentarily blinded by a huge flash of light. When the light faded, Shadow looked ahead on the runway and had his greatest fear come true. Sonic had successfully used Chaos Control and was running at full speed in the direction of the front of the Cannon.

"WHAT? It can't be!" Shadow shouted in disbelief. Sonic could pull it off and with a fake Emerald, no less. Shadow revved himself up and started to chase after the blue hedgehog, but it was really of no use. He was not catching up at all. Up ahead in the distance, he could see Sonic look over his shoulder at him with that same smile, that same cocky expression. Shadow hadn't planned on getting into this situation and his options proved to be limited.

"Chaos Spear!" he screamed, raising his right arm into the air and then thrusting it downwards. A bolt of yellow energy came down from above on Sonic's right side, causing him to stumble, but he was otherwise unharmed. Shadow gained a little bit of ground as a result of this. "Chaos Spear!" he screamed again, and again more bolts of energy came crashing down all around Sonic, slowing him down to the point where Shadow was in position to pummel him once more.

Shadow charged in, Sonic not too far ahead, and led with his shoulder, ready to try and keep Sonic down once more, at least to buy some time. This time, though, Sonic was prepared for this move. At the very last moment, Sonic jumped up right over Shadow, causing Shadow, who was expecting contact, to fall flat on his face on the runway floor.

Sonic blasted off at full speed once again the moment he hit the ground. This time, Shadow wouldn't be following. "See ya later, loser!" Sonic called out from ahead of Shadow. Shadow picked up his head as he lay on his chest, and then dropped his head back to the ground dejectedly. His only hope now was that Robotnik had the last Emerald. _I shouldn't even need the Cannon if I have that seventh Emerald_, he thought to himself.

Shadow pulled out his walkie-talkie one last time. "Doctor, come in, do you read me? Do you have the Emerald? Please, answer me!"

For the first time, Shadow could hear static crackling from the device. He heard Robotnik clearing his throat on the other end. "Yes, Shadow, I have it," Robotnik said. "I'm going to the control room right now to place it in."

Without responding, Shadow took a sigh of relief. He looked ahead in the direction that Sonic had run off in. "He may have won this time," he said to himself. "But I'll have the last laugh."

* * *

Tails and Amy sat together facing the window overlooking Earth in the ARK's viewing room. Both of them looked downward forlornly. Amy was still wiping tears off her face, and, although he wasn't crying, Tails was as heartbroken as she was. He took a look at his wristwatch, which he had synchronized with the time the Eclipse Cannon was scheduled to fire again. There was 1 minute and 33 seconds left.

Tails then picked up his walkie-talkie, which he had laid next to him. "Sonic…I did it," he spoke into it, figuring there wouldn't be a response.

"Awesome job, Tails!" said a proud voice over the walkie-talkie.

Amy and Tails looked at each other in shock. They recognized the voice right away.

"Sonic?" Tails said into his walkie-talkie, closing his eyes fearfully, scared that he wouldn't hear the voice again.

"Look outside!" shouted the voice again. This time, Tails and Amy looked at each other and flashed smiles bigger than any smile they had flashed before. They stood up and caught each other in another huge embrace. Amy started crying again, but this time these were tears of joy. Tails could feel his heart jumping out of his chest. His best friend was alive and was ready to save the day once again.

Suddenly remembering Sonic's orders, the two of them took a look out the viewing room's window. They looked in the direction of the Cannon. The needle-shaped nose of the Cannon's "face" began to open up again, but once it did, it was throttled by a series of explosions. Bolts of electricity shot out for the Cannon, as if it wanted to muster the strength to fire. But it wouldn't.

From inside the viewing room, Tails and Amy could see him clearly: Sonic the Hedgehog was hanging off a pole located near the Cannon's turret. He smiled and gave them a thumbs-up.

"All right, Sonic!" Tails shouted triumphantly. It seemed like the day was won. That was when the space colony started to shake.

Sonic could feel the shaking as he hung onto the pole near the tip of the Cannon. He looked around confusedly, not sure if that was supposed to be happening. "Tails, what's going on?" he asked.

"I'm not sure, Sonic," Tails replied worriedly. "Let me just get to the Cyclone and see if—" he turned around to face the Cyclone, but stopped dead in his tracks. Amy, who had heard Tails suddenly stop speaking, turned around as well. Both of them felt their jaws drop to the ground. As they were sitting mourning what they thought was the loss of Sonic, Eggman had gone through Tails' Cyclone. He was nowhere to be seen. The only thing he left was the small silver suitcase that was in the Cyclone. It was the suitcase that contained the last Chaos Emerald, and it was empty

* * *

Moments before Tails and Amy realized Sonic was alive, Dr. Ivo Robotnik had already made his way to ARK's central control room with the last Chaos Emerald. He admired the yellow Emerald's beauty. Though he was exhausted and in pain, Robotnik nonetheless felt proud of himself.

"This—ahem," he said, coughing and gasping for breath, feeling tired also because he had run to the control room. "This completes my pain to take over the world! In a few minutes time, the world—or what will remain of it—will bow down to me!"

He thrust the final Emerald into its slot in the control room's console, alongside the other six Emeralds. A ring of golden light shot out from the console and towards the dark depths of the room. After having achieved everything that he had set out to do, Robotnik reacted by laughing maniacally.

Ten seconds remained before the cannon was scheduled to fire, as the monitor next to the console pointed out. It ticked down to nine seconds. Then to eight. Then to seven…then the timer stopped ticking. As the doctor continued on laughing, he failed to notice any of this. He also failed to realize that the timer on the monitor had been replaced by the word "WARNING" in huge red letters.

This, only Shadow knew would happen.


	19. Chapter 18: The Unexpected

_Chapter 18: The Unexpected_

Alarms began to blare in the ARK's central control room. Dr. Robotnik was finally drawn to the monitor in the control room, and after studying it for a few seconds, came to the conclusion the Eclipse Cannon never fired.

"What's going on now?" he shouted agitatedly. He watched as the monitor continued to flash the word "WARNING" in big, red letters. He then moved towards the control panel to his left and tried to enter codes to try and bypass whatever the problem was, but nothing worked. Frustrated beyond belief, the doctor screamed as loudly as he could; the screams echoed up and down the room.

He was about to start smashing the controls with his fists when he saw a video spontaneously pop up on the monitor. It was a video of an old man tied to a chair and with his head bowed. The man was skinny and bald, but had a long and wiry brown mustache. Robotnik's mouth gaped wide when he recognized the man.

"I-It's my g-grandfather," the doctor stammered nervously to himself.

* * *

Once again, Sonic was racing to reach his companions. The vibrations that he had felt as he hung from the front of the Eclipse Cannon had not subsided, which made his journey slightly more difficult. He ran backwards across the runways and eventually found his way back into the ARK and the viewing room where Tails, Knuckles, and Amy were.

"Sonic, you're here!" Amy gushed the moment that Sonic ran into the room. She tried to run up to him and hug him, but the ARK began to shake more ferociously than ever before, nearly knocking them all to the ground.

Once the shaking had subsided to a point where they could stand up straight, Knuckles asked, "Sonic, have you figured out why we're feeling all these vibrations?"

"Of course not," Sonic retorted with a hint of annoyance. "I was channeling too much of my thought trying to get here. It's pretty dangerous out there, y'know?"

Knuckles narrowed his eyes at the hedgehog but said nothing further. Immediately after that, Tails then attracted Sonic's attention. "Wait, Sonic, did you hear that?" the fox asked. "It sounds like someone else is coming!"

The other three looked around, trying to get a sense of what Tails was talking about. It didn't take long for them to hear quick, scurrying movements from up above. The moment that they all looked up, Rouge the Bat came crashing down to the ground next to them with a grim look on her face.

"You!" Knuckles shouted angrily at Rouge, clearly shocked at her reappearance. "So was all that back there just a game? I had a feeling you wouldn't give up on the Emerald that easily!"

Seemingly ignoring all of this, an out-of-breath Rouge announced, "It's over. It's all over for us."

"What? What do you mean?" asked Sonic. Rouge's eyes widened initially, as this was the first time she knew for sure that Sonic was still alive, but she decided that going on with her announcement was more important.

"I…I just received a message from my boss…" she said weakly, almost whimpering. "This space colony is hurtling itself towards Earth." The other four were taken aback. That explained all the vibrations. Tails ran towards the window overlooking Earth. He could see it now. Earth looked much larger than it did a few minutes ago. "We're approaching Earth at an incredible speed," she finished, her voice trailing off. Just as she was about to look downwards in shame, a monitor in the room caught her eye. The same video that had popped up on monitor in the control room was now being streamed on the monitor in this room.

"What is that? Or who is that?" Knuckles asked.

On Earth, people were asking the same question. The video was being transmitted to every electronic screen on Earth, it seemed. From the huge LCD screens overlooking the streets of Central City to television sets on the other side of the globe, Gerald Robotnik was in plain view of everyone.

The video was clearly outdated. The quality was choppy and the colors were not as defined as in the present day. But Gerald's voice could be heard loud and clear by every citizen of Earth.

"This is a death sentence for every human being on Earth," the professor announced to the world. "If my calculations are correct, the space colony ARK will collide with the Earth in less than 28 minutes. None of you will survive."

People ran outside in fear. Once again, the planet was being threatened. A few people would see it first: the space colony zooming towards Earth, shrouded in fire as if it were a huge meteorite. They would call out what they saw in agony, and others would look up, see the same thing, and react the same way. Chaos, once again, had broken out on Earth.

"All seven Chaos Emeralds have been collected," boomed Gerald's voice. "The program has been initiated. It cannot be disabled. All of you ungrateful people on Earth, all of you, who have taken everything that I have known and loved away from me will know the pain that I feel."

Somebody not in view of the camera in the video called out to Gerald and asked, "Is that all you wish to say?"

"No," replied the professor emotionlessly.

"Ready!" yelled the other voice in the video. The camera zoomed out slightly at this point. It became clear to all of the video's viewers that Gerald had been sitting in front of a firing squad and had been uttering his last words. The video came to a conclusion before anything else could be seen.

On the ARK, the vibrations continued. "Oh gosh, they're only getting worse!" Amy remarked.

"That was Professor Gerald Robotnik," called out a delirious voice from behind the five mammals. It was the voice of Dr. Ivo Robotnik, who seemed to be driven mad by the occurrences of the last few minutes. "He was one of the greatest scientific minds of his time. And he was my grandfather."

Pointing threateningly with one of his spiked fists, Knuckles shouted, "So it was you behind this the whole time? You better find some way to stop this thing!"

"Do you think I'm an idiot, Knucklehead?" the doctor responded furiously. "As long as I'm still on the ARK when we impact, I will also die, don't you get it? We're all in the same boat here! I would have stopped it if I could, but I can't! It's just not possible!"

Suddenly irate himself, Knuckles had to be restrained from attacking the doctor by Sonic. Knuckles tried clawing his way out of Sonic's clutches, but the hedgehog's grip proved too strong. After a brief scuffle, Sonic was able to push the echidna off of him. Having taken the time to take a breath, Knuckles cooled off a bit, allowing Sonic some time to speak to the doctor himself.

"What do you mean it's not possible?" Sonic asked.

For the first time, Robotnik himself realized that the hedgehog was not dead. "You're a persistent little rat, aren't you, Sonic? I could have sworn I left you for dead not too long ago."

Unnerved by the doctor's insults, Sonic coolly replied, "Letting Knuckles near the controls in the space shuttle was more dangerous than you'll ever be."

The doctor began to snarl under his breath while Sonic returned a confident smile. Knuckles, who probably didn't realize that he was just made fun of, gave Sonic a high-five and began to smile widely himself. Trying his best to ignore the two of them, Robotnik pulled out a Compact Disc and began to walk towards the group of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Rouge, passing on the disc to Rouge when he got to her.

"What's this?" Rouge asked, observing the disc in her hand. There didn't seem to be anything peculiar about this disc. It was just a normal CD for all the others knew.

"I transferred the contents of my grandfather's personal journal onto this disc," the doctor explained. Speaking only to Rouge, he said, "This is something I should have shown you a long time ago."

Robotnik gestured towards the monitor in the room. Rouge took note of this and moved towards the monitor, finding a drive where she could insert the disc. Immediately after she placed it in, a transcript appeared on the monitor. These were Gerald's words. The six of them looked apprehensive, fearful of what they were about to read.

"Um, I don't want to be a pain, but the letters are a little small…" Amy said sheepishly. "Would you mind reading what it says out loud?"

Rouge, being the closest to the monitor, decided to be the one to do so. "This was his last entry," she said. "_'I don't quite know what happened or what went wrong. Was it a mistake to create the Ultimate Life Form? I thought it would be something that would benefit mankind. G.U.N. landed on the colony less than a week ago. They came to destroy Project Shadow._

"'_They completely shut down the colony. They probably didn't want it falling into the wrong hands. They shut down the ARK under the premise that there had been an accident. I found Maria's name among those who died in the raid. She meant everything to me. I can't bear the thought that she is dead, and all because of my research. I have lost everything. I have nothing more to live for. I've been going insane that past few weeks. All I can think about is that I must avenge her. Somehow. Some way._

"'_I've been scared. I've been having trouble controlling my thoughts. All I can think about is that I want everything to end. I have been able to complete the project on my own. He is Shadow. He is perfect of mind, perfect of body. All that I want accomplished has been left with him. If you, the reader, find this journal, and wish to release him, you can fill the world with destruction. _

"'_This shall be my last entry. I have been searched for by the government ever since the day of the raid. Although I believe that I can likely go for many more days before I am discovered, I will turn myself in. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, left to live for.'_"

She paused, giving everybody a chance to think about what they had just heard. "Well… that's how it ends," she finally said. Nobody said anything. Nobody even looked at each other. All they could think about was how they had heard the words of a madman who had lived 50 years ago, and who was now ready to exact the revenge that he had planned all those years ago.

Rouge was the one to break the silence when she said to the doctor, "So, this is why you released Shadow from Prison Island."

Trying to avoid culpability for his actions, Eggman changed the subject by stating, "The core of the Eclipse Cannon is now in a state of intense reactivity and explosiveness due to the fact that the power of the Chaos Emeralds has been harnessed to its full potential. If this colony makes contact with Earth, the entire planet could shatter into pieces. And regrettably, so would we."

The doctor sounded dejected, and as though he were ready to give in. The others, though, weren't quite as prepared to go down without a fight.

"Hey, there's still time!" Tails called out to the rest. "If we work now, there's got to be some way we can stop the colony! You said something about the Chaos Emeralds having something to do with all of this, right, Eggman?"

"Of course," the doctor replied patiently, although he was clearly close to losing his temper.

"Then all we have to do is figure out how to stop the energy," said Tails.

"But there is no way to stop the energy, boy!" Eggman shouted condescendingly. "Tell me, hmm? Is there a way?"

Tails stared at him, thinking of an answer, but Rouge figured one out before he did. "I know!" she exclaimed excitedly. She began to walk over to Knuckles. "The Master Emerald!" At first, the echidna grew defensive upon hearing the bat mention the Emerald aloud. Rouge explained, "You were the one that told me that the Master Emerald has the ability to neutralize the ability of the Chaos Emeralds."

Suddenly coming to this realization, Knuckles pulled out the shrunken Master Emerald, muttered something under his breath, and watched as it grew to be about the size of his palm. "She's right," he said. 'The Master Emerald might be our only hope at this point."

Having failed at overriding the ARK's course from the control room, Robotnik still seemed pessimistic about any chances of stopping the colony. "Listen, all of the energy from the Emeralds has been directed towards the Eclipse Cannon's core. The core is located at the very center of this colony. The path there is heavily fortified, and we may not have enough time to get there."

"I don't think that's the case. Not if we all work together," replied Tails who began to run up to the monitor. He typed in a few commands on the control panel in front of the monitor and brought up a map of the colony. "Look, from here, we can map out the fastest way to the colony. Let's not forget that we have the fastest thing the world has to offer on our side," he said, winking at Sonic, who had merely been observing up until this point. Sonic beamed at him and allowed him to continue to formulate the plan.

"This should be the quickest way," Tails said, pointing out a north-to-south path on the map.

Robotnik immediately pointed out flaws in the plan. "There are two huge doors you're forgetting, fox boy. How are we getting through those?"

Tails studied the map quickly to see what the doctor was referring to. "Well," he began, "we should be able to just shoot through the first door."

"What about the second door?" the doctor asked. "That one's more important. That's going to lead us directly into the core."

"Well…we're going to need to throw a switch. Which is on the other side of the colony."

"That's not a big deal," Sonic chimed in. "We'll just have to split up. We'll have one team flip the switch and have the other team ready to run through that second door once it opens."

The doctor thought very deeply about all of this. He had planned on finding a place in the colony where maybe he could hide out and possibly survive the impact. Of course, that plan was far-fetched. He began to think about the basics of their plan: two teams, one providing the path for the other. It could work. He was convinced.

"All right then," he said. "We don't have much time to lose. Let's get to work."

With a proud smile on his face, Tails commanded, "Okay, so here's what we should do. Or have to do, I should say." He glanced at Sonic as he said this. Sonic gestured in a circular motion with and open hand as if to tell Tails to get on with it. "Right, anyway, we have to split into two teams. The two paths run almost parallel to each other: they're just on different levels, an upper level and a lower level. One team will take on the lower section of the colony and the other will take the upper section. Eggman, since we've got the mechs, we ought to be on different teams."

"I have no objections," the doctor said.

"Now, I was thinking," Tails continued, "that Knuckles and Rouge should be on the same team, the team that'll throw the switch. Considering you two are both probably the best at hunting down things."

Knuckles and Rouge looked at each other distastefully but both decided to go along with it.

"We're gonna need Knuckles at the core, though," Sonic reminded Tails.

After remembering this, Tails thought for a moment that the entire plan was going to be a huge failure once again, but Eggman bailed him out. "Hold on for a second," the doctor said. "Look, the room where the switch is located is right under the entrance to the core itself." He pointed towards a different room now. "This adjacent room stores some kind of fluid. If you could flood the bottom room with the fluid, Knuckles could swim in the fluid and right up to the upper room and to the door. Part of the room outside the entrance has no floor so Knuckles could swim through there."

"Wait, WHAT?" Knuckles shouted incredulously. "You want me to swim through nasty fluid made up of… God knows what… I mean, are you crazy?"

"Listen, Knux, it's looking like the only way," Sonic said. The echidna just stood there, resigned to the fact that he was going to have to go through with this assignment. Sonic continued, "And of course, we'll saving the best for last." He puffed out his chest and gave a thumbs-up to everyone else.

"And what about me?"

Everybody turned around to look at Amy, who had been waiting quietly behind everybody else for a chance to get in on the plan.

"The plan's perfect the way it is, girl," the doctor said without compassion. "You're just going to have to wait here."

Sonic and Tails looked at each other concernedly, as they once again had failed to include Amy in the plan. "Sorry Amy," Tails said solemnly to her.

Pursing her lips but deciding not to get as upset as she did last time, Amy replied, "It doesn't matter. As long as it gets done, I guess."

"All right, that settles that!" the doctor shouted, now sounding much more upbeat. "We must start now. There's no time left to waste!"

They all began to run towards their respective starting points, but Rouge stopped Eggman before he could get to his. "Doctor," she whispered to him, "you don't really believe that Shadow meant to do all this? Right?"

"The task at hand, Rouge," the doctor admonished her.

"Please, doctor, can you just answer the question?"

Robotnik sighed. "My grandfather said that whatever he had planned, he had left it with Shadow. This is undoubtedly my grandfather's work. So yes, I do believe that this was Shadow's plan all along." He wanted to move on, but he saw that Rouge was unsatisfied with this answer. "Look, Rouge. I know that you think highly of Shadow. Especially since he saved you from Prison Island. But consider this: if this were really all just an accident, why isn't Shadow here trying to help us?"

He walked out the door of the viewing room, leaving it at that. Rouge stood still for a moment, thinking of all this. She ultimately decided to let the matter lie. The others were going to need her if they wanted to live.


	20. Chapter 19: Cooperation

_Chapter 19: Cooperation_

Tails elected to go with Knuckles and Rouge on the lower route to the core, much to the dismay of Robotnik. Never, not even in his wildest dreams, did he expect to team up directly with Sonic. But that was how the plan was laid out, and with time running short, he didn't have any other choice.

On the other hand, Sonic reveled in the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that had been presented to him. True, the world was at stake. But he had dealt with that before. This was also a chance to brutalize, disparage, and ridicule his archenemy, with no chance whatsoever that the doctor would make any attempt at retribution.

"What did you call that thing you tried to kill me with?" Sonic asked the doctor obnoxiously. "It was a while ago. Um…what was it, I'm trying to think…"

"The task at hand, Sonic," the doctor admonished him.

"I know, but gosh, I really need to get this off my chest. Was it…was it the Screw Mobile?" Sonic asked, trying to stifle his laughter.

"The task. At hand." The doctor growled through clenched teeth.

"Or was it the Drill Mobile?" continued Sonic, who was finding it harder and harder to keep from laughing. "I mean, you do realize what those sound like, right? I mean, _Screw _Mobile? _Drill_ Mobile? Am I the only one who's noticed this?"

Enraged, Robotnik bellowed, "THE DRILL MOBILE AND THE SCREW MOBILE WERE TWO DIFFERENT MACHINES, AND YES, THIS HAS BEEN POINTED OUT TO ME BEFORE!" Unable to contain himself any longer, Sonic burst out laughing so hard it brought tears to his eyes. The doctor watched him helplessly until the hedgehog started to settle down, wiping the tears that were strewn all over his face. "Can we please just go on with the plan?" the doctor asked.

Still giggling, Sonic merely nodded to him in response, and the two moved on.

* * *

Down below them, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge were pummeling their way through antiquated G.U.N. droids and hordes of Artificial Chaos as they searched for the switch to open the second door in the path of Eggman and Sonic. They ran through dimly lit hallways, encountering wave after wave of robots, but they had relatively little trouble with any of them.

"Not that I'm getting tired or anything, but how much longer do we have to go?" Knuckles asked boastfully, turning his head slightly towards Rouge as he spoke. The bat ignored this.

"Not far now," replied Tails, who was checking a map in his Cyclone while nonchalantly shooting down robots without even looking at them. "Just so we're clear, do we all know what we're doing once we get there?"

"I'm going for the switch to elevate the liquid," answered Rouge as she kicked down a G.U.N. droid that had attempted to swoop down on her.

"And I'm going through the liquid, to find a switch to let Sonic through, I meet up with Sonic, and then we save the world," said Knuckles, clearly still displeased with his role in the plan.

* * *

It was Sonic's turn to feel annoyed once he and Robotnik actually began making progress trying to make it to the cannon's core. He felt as though he had to come to a halt every time he reached a new room; the doctor's Egg Walker proved too slow to keep up with the hedgehog.

"C'mon, Eggy, I'm getting old here!" shouted Sonic as he once again held up to allow Robotnik to catch up to him.

Slowly losing his patience with the hedgehog, Robotnik screamed back, "You're not going to save the world any faster if you leave me behind! You're just going to have to be more patient!"

Robotnik fired a few lasers past Sonic's head, which the hedgehog initially took to be an instance of friendly fire. However, when he glanced behind him to see what the lasers had hit, he realized that they had actually impacted a pair of G.U.N. beetles that were about to take him out from behind.

"Nice shot, doc," mumbled Sonic, who again ran off ahead of Robotnik without even waiting for a response.

"Get back here!" the doctor shouted after the hedgehog.

"At least let me clear a path for you while I'm waiting!" Sonic called back as he fought his way through another group of G.U.N. bots. He just barely remained in Robotnik's sight.

Sonic found himself surrounded by five humanoid, laser-firing G.U.N. drones. He was able to drop-kick one to get that one out of the way. He pushed off the first drone and flung himself towards a second one which he subdued with an elbow and a right cross to the face. He ducked under a laser that was fired straight for his head before kicking out the legs of his would-be assassin. With only two remaining, Sonic turned around, ran straight for the closest drone, dodged a laser that it shot right at his chest, and delivered a massive uppercut right under its chin, causing its head to fly off its torso in almost cartoon-like fashion.

With only one more left to deal with, Sonic turned around to try and finish it off, only to run right into its grasp. It had grabbed the fur on Sonic's head and had lifted him up right in front of its face. Sonic tried in vain to squirm out of the robot's grip as it raised its laser cannon right in Sonic's face.

"Sorry," said a nearby voice, "but the hedgehog's mine to kill!"

Robotnik had just shown up in the nick off time and blew off the drone's head, ironically saving his mortal enemy.

Sonic, who only half-doubted his survival, loosened himself from the robot's grasp and dusted himself off. "I knew you would come and save me," said Sonic to Robotnik, while facetiously batting his eyes.

"Don't get used to it," retorted the doctor, who couldn't help but smile himself. "And let's try not to get too far ahead of me next time!"

* * *

Tails fired cannon after cannon at the security door that would get Knuckles and Rouge closer to their respective objectives, but the door was hardly budging.

"Just give me a little more time, guys!" Tails called back with a hint of worry to his companions who were both taking out swarms of G.U.N. robots and some Artificial Chaos which were joining the party.

"It's not a problem for me," replied Knuckles. "How 'bout you, Rouge?" he asked the bat. "Need a bit of help over there?"

"Not at all," Rouge responded, playing along as she threw one deadly kick that took out two G.U.N. drones. "It's almost too easy for me."

Knuckles raised his eyebrows and smiled in between punching. "Really? Too easy?" he asked, although he could clearly see the robots were no challenge for her. "Fine then! Maybe we should up the stakes a little bit with some friendly competition?"

Intrigued by the proposition and while almost nonchalantly fighting off robots, Rouge answered, "Okay, what do you have in mind?"

"It's simple, whoever can take out more robots wins. Keep count out loud."

"Oh, you're on. One!" Rouge screamed as she pushed her leg straight into another G.U.N. droid which was flung helplessly towards a wall, crashing to its demise.

Knuckles, flashing a grin, took out a pair of robots with one deadly punch. "That's two for me!" he boasted.

Tails started to break a sweat as continued firing at the door. He had switched to heavier artillery, which was doing a better job of weakening the door's structure, but had a lower rate of fire. "You guys are gonna have to keep me covered just a little while longer!" he called out to the others.

"Gladly!" Rouge called back as she zoomed across the room, decimating a robot that Knuckles had set his sights on. "Eighteen!"

"Jeez, where'd you come from?" asked the echidna. "That one was mine!" The bat didn't answer and flew off towards a trio of robots on the other side of the room. Thinking quickly, Knuckles found another nearby droid and twisted its cannoned arm towards the group of robots, causing it to fire rapidly and destroy the robots before Rouge had a chance to get to them.

"Ooh," Knuckles said dryly. "That's twenty for me now."

Rouge didn't have much time to do so much as purse her lips at him when Tails had finally succeeded in breaking down the door. "All right, I got it!" yelled the fox. "Let's move on!"

A grinning Knuckles asked Tails, "What next, chief?"

Skimming through the map that he had of the colony's interior, Tails replied, "Okay, this is where the two of you are gonna need to part ways. Knuckles, you find the switch to open up the door for Sonic, and Rouge, you find the room with the switch to drain the liquid so Knuckles can get up there too."

"All right, then—"

"OOH!" Knuckles interrupted the bat. "Looks like that's game over and look who won. I did!" He shouted pointing two thumbs to himself.

Rouge stared at him blankly. "You're so unprofessional," she remarked, and ran off to find her switch.

"Huh?" Knuckles let out with an air of dismay as he watched her go. "After all that, that's how she responds? Lame!"

Watching while a bit frightened from the side was Tails, who meekly reminded Knuckles, "Yeah…let's just get that door open, okay?"

* * *

"Well, here's the door!" Sonic called out with glee as he approached the solid iron gate. "It's not open yet, doc, I told you we'd be too fast for them…doc?" He turned around. Robotnik had just appeared around a corner at the other end of the corridor where Sonic now was.

"What did I say about getting too far ahead of me?" the doctor called back angrily.

"Come on, doc, I was jogging!"

"Jogging? You must have been 'jogging' at about half the speed of sound!"

"Well…yeah, that's normally how fast I jog!"

The doctor smacked his palm against his face, not noticing that a few G.U.N. droids had popped up behind him.

"Watch out, doc, I've got 'em!" Sonic screamed and zoomed in the doctor's direction, taking out all of the droids in one fell swoop. Robotnik had barely had time to pick his head up to see what Sonic had been fussing about.

"Oh," Robotnik said in response to what had just gone around him. "Good going, Sonic."

Sonic winked and said, "See, we mesh together just fine!" He walked alongside the Egg Walker once again towards the gate. "So now what?" he asked.

"We wait for everybody else to do their jobs."

"Oh, we wait. Of course." Sonic said disgustedly. Trying to kill some time, Sonic asked Robotnik, "So doc, you wanna hear a cool story?"

The doctor sighed before saying, "No, Sonic, not particularly."

"Why not?"

* * *

Knuckles trudged along slowly as he made his way towards the switch that would ultimately open the way to the core. He took out a walkie-talkie and spoke into it to describe his surroundings: "All right, it's er...glowing orange everywhere and stuff. I don't know, the designs on the walls look kind of…what's the word…veiny?"

"You think they're veiny, too?" Tails responded. "Well, cool, I know exactly where you are and what you're talking about!"

"All right, Tails, it's not that exciting, just tell me where to go from here."

"You look like you're just a few stories up from the switch. Down the end of the corridor in front of you should be an air vent which you can probably bust through. Climb down and count three vents and pop out through the third one and that should be the room with the switch."

"Got it," Knuckles said, but just as he was about to start moving, he felt a rumbling coming from the walls to his side, accompanied by the sound of water rushing. "What's going on?"

Just then, an amber-colored fluid rapidly began to burst through the walls and started to fill up the corridor rather quickly. "Tails, there's this liquid coming from everywhere, what's happening?" Knuckles screamed into his walkie-talkie.

"Uh-oh, Rouge must have found her switch already! Knuckles, you have to move!"

"Aw, and it's just as disgusting as I thought it would be," he moaned to himself. He sprinted to the end of the hallway and found the air vent that Tails said would be there. He punched through it and positioned himself to climb down, only to find that the passageway had already filled up with the fluid. He grunted to himself at the sight of this, then took a deep breath and continued on.

He proceeded down the shaft much more slowly than if he had just been climbing down it, as swimming was not as much of a strength for Knuckles as climbing was. He passed the first vent rather quickly, but it took him some time to reach the second, causing him to worry. Could he hold his breath for that long? He swam further and further down the shaft, beginning to panic. Where was that third vent? At last, he found it and punched through. There was the switch on the floor just a few breaststrokes from his reach. As he reached for it, however, an Artificial Chaos, still glowing blue while submerged in the amber liquid, formed a limb and blocked Knuckles' path.

Knuckles chuckled to himself.

* * *

Back on the upper level, Sonic and Robotnik had begun to see the amber liquid rising up, too. They stood on something of a platform that was raised just above where the liquid had stopped rising. But the gate was yet to be opened, and there wasn't the faintest sign of Knuckles, whom they needed along with the Master Emerald.

"C'mon Knux, where are you?" Sonic asked anxiously.

The doctor was deep in thought. "That liquid has been rising for quite some time now. Would it be realistic to expect that he hasn't drowned yet?"

"I believe in him, doc, that's the only thing we can do right now," Sonic said, searching for just a trace of his red echidna friend through the amber-colored liquid. Suddenly, an alarm rang out. The two of them could hear the gate giving way. Knuckles had done it. The gate to the core was opening.

"See? I told you he'd come through!" Sonic yelled in triumph.

"Okay, but _where_ is he?"

Sonic kept looking through the liquid, kept holding out hope. He knew that the lives of many on Earth were at stake if Knuckles didn't rise with the Emerald. He panted a bit, continuing to search, looking at every possible place that he could be. Then he saw it: the red figure coming up through the liquid. Knuckles made it.

Sonic reached down and grabbed the echidna and pulled him out of the liquid. Knuckles gasped frantically for air immediately once he had the opportunity to do so. "Air…sweet air," he said weakly.

"Hey, you're gonna be okay, Knux, we've just got one more thing for you to do, okay?" Sonic told him gently.

"Of course. That ugly robot monster didn't stop me down there. The liquid couldn't stop me. Nothing's gonna stop us now, Sonic." They grinned at each other. Sonic nodded to the doctor who turned back towards the way that they had originally come while the other two made their way finally towards the core.

* * *

Amy, still bemoaning the fact that she once again was overlooked as plans were being schemed, slogged along the corridors of the laboratory areas of the ARK as she passed by the viewing room. She saw him, just standing there, calmly watching as the colony descended towards Earth. "If they won't give me a way to help save the world, then I might just give myself one!" she whispered to herself.

She cautiously approached Shadow the Hedgehog. If he had noticed that she was in his presence, he made no indication of that being the case. "Shadow," she called out to him. "We need your help. Please, we need you!"

Without even turning to look at who he was talking to, Shadow replied, "It's useless. The plan is perfect. Even if I did help you, there would be nothing I could do."

Her voice becoming even more emotional, Amy pleaded, "But there has to be something you can do." Seeing that this was having no effect on him, she decided to take a more serious route. "Listen, Shadow…I know that people fight over dumb things. A lot of people are selfish. I get it. But down to their very cores, they're all good. If they never give up on chasing what they think is right, they will always have a reason to be happy. They deserve to be saved, Shadow, if only for that reason.

"_I beg you, please, do it for them."_

But that wasn't Amy that said that. No, Shadow thought to himself.

"_Please do it for them. And for me. And for a better future!"_

_He was in the viewing room, but not how he had just previously seen it. He could see himself again, from 50 years ago, in the stasis tube, watching Maria at the controls as the soldiers tried to barge their way in. _

"_Give them a chance…to be happy."_

"No…I was wrong. I was wrong about it the whole time!" Shadow screamed angrily to himself as Amy watched with fright. He clenched his teeth. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Shadow shed a tear. He now knew what he truly needed to do. "I have to go keep my promise to Maria," he said more to himself than to Amy, whom he again did not acknowledge. He turned and ran out the door. The core awaited him, too.


	21. Chapter 20: Atonement

_Chapter 20: Atonement_

The Eclipse Cannon's core itself looked more like the ruins of an ancient civilization than a research facility. The walls were made of cracked limestone and the floors of aged brick. The floor that Sonic and Knuckles stood on was a raised platform that jutted out above some of the amber-colored fluid that Knuckles had become just well-acquainted with. There were two sections of the platform which mirrored each other: one on the left and another on the right. They might have been connected at one time, but a stream of the amber fluid ran between them now. The two sections of bridge initially ran straight and parallel to each other but both branched out to form half-circles about halfway down before continuing on straight again. Most striking to Sonic and Knuckles were the structures at the far end of the room, at the end of the bridge.

"It looks just like the shrine of the Master Emerald," remarked Knuckles to the hedgehog, referring to the structure on the ground.

The other structure hung from the ceiling and appeared more modern. It was metallic and funnel-shaped, with the smaller end of the funnel pointing towards the top of the replicated shrine. It seemed to be connected to something else in a room above the ceiling. Sonic recognized this pulsating mechanism as part of the machine that he had seen in the central control room of the Eclipse Cannon.

"They must have designed that thing to look like the shrine to fully harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds," Sonic said. He took a glance at Knuckles and said, "That's gotta be where we have to take the Master Emerald."

The echidna nodded at him and they both proceeded to sprint across the bridge, getting to the half-circular section before they fell to ground screaming in pain while covering their ears. A deafening sound of a voice had come from above. It was a voice they had heard before.

"All of you ungrateful people on Earth, all of you, who have taken everything that I have known and loved away from me will know the pain that I feel," said the voice of Gerald Robotnik, exactly as he had in his earlier video.

Bolts of electricity shot in the air above them immediately following the end of this message.

"What's going on now?" Knuckles shouted as he stood up and uncovered his ears.

"I'm not sure, but something's definitely coming!" Sonic called back, standing as well.

The numerous bolts of electricity came together after a brief moment and caused an explosion of blinding light, causing Sonic and Knuckles to fall onto the floor once again. When the two of them found the strength to try and look into the light, they witnessed a gigantic beast of a creature floating in the air in front of them. It looked like an enlarged lizard, but with several tubes and mechanical objects protruding from its body. It fell to the circular portion of fluid between the half-circles of the two bridges and growled in front of them; its mouth appeared to be wide enough to swallow the two of them whole all at once.

"Oh no," Knuckles groaned.

"I know, seriously, we still have to get past _this_ thing?" Sonic shouted to the echidna.

"I just swam in that thing's urine," Knuckles moaned, now looking very sick. Sonic shot him an incredulous look. "Hey, you weren't the one under there, it was awful!" Knuckles fired back.

Deciding to let the matter lie, Sonic looked back and examined the creature. "This must the prototype of the Ultimate Life Form," he said. "But it's supposed to be encapsulated! How did it manage to get down here?"

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it," said a voice from behind them.

Shadow the Hedgehog had appeared onto the scene. He strutted in the direction of the prototype. Every step he took was confident yet ferocious.

"Wait, what?" Sonic exclaimed. "What are you doing here and what do you think you're about to do?"

Shadow now stood in front of Sonic and Knuckles. At first, he didn't respond to Sonic, but eventually he turned and did. "I'll take care of the Biolizard. You two make your way to the shrine!"

Sonic and Knuckles looked at each other in disbelief. Shadow had been working against them the whole time.

"Can we trust him?" Knuckles asked Sonic.

Sonic took a look at Shadow. Something about his facial expression said something different about him. This was a Shadow that he had never seen before. Sonic turned back to Knuckles and said, "Yeah. Yeah, we can trust him."

Knuckles took a deep breath as he still was unsure. But he nodded, signaling that he was following Sonic's lead.

Taking this as permission to proceed, Shadow again faced the Biolizard. This was to be a date with destiny. The prototype roared once again and turned its head towards Shadow's. Shadow stared back at it, not flinching in the slightest.

"Go!" he suddenly yelled and dashed off to his right, over the stream of the Biolizard's amber-colored waste and to the portion of the bridge on the right side of the room. The Biolizard turned its head in Shadow's direction, leaving the path in front of Sonic and Knuckles uncovered. The two gave a nod to one another and proceeded along as the Biolizard went after Shadow.

Shadow ran along the right half-circle until he almost ran into the stream of liquid which would have pushed him to his death. He skidded to a stop and turned around to find the Biolizard's mouth about to chomp at his head. Shadow dove to the ground to avoid it while maintaining his balance, still trying to avoid falling into the stream. He rolled across the floor, avoiding the Biolizard as if it were a bird trying to peck him. At one point, the prototype smashed its mouth into the ground, and it looked upwards and roared in pain. While seated, Shadow noticed that attached to the side of the Biolizard's mouth was a metal pipe. Without putting much thought into it, Shadow leapt up and tried grinding on the pipe. It worked, and he skated along the pipe, which led to the circular apparatus that protruded from the prototype's abdomen. In the middle of the apparatus looked like a glowing red sore. As he reached the pipe's end, Shadow leapt off and drove the punch straight to the sore.

The Biolizard reacted in intense pain to the attack, jumping upwards as a result. This knocked Shadow from the prototype's body, causing him to fall face-first back onto the bridge. The prototype crashed back down to the ground and roared angrily. It again turned quickly back towards Shadow, who quickly noticed this, got up, and ran in the opposite direction.

"Wow, look at Shadow go!" Knuckles yelled to Sonic on the other side of the bridge. Sonic was about to turn and glance in that direction but noticed the prototype's tail crashing down about to flatten the two of them.

"Tail! Move!" Sonic shouted, and ran in the direction of Knuckles.

"Tails isn't here, Sonic—" Knuckles tried to respond before he was cut off by Sonic tackling him to get him out of the way. The two got up and Knuckles took a look at what came crashing down beside them. "You could have told me we were about to get impaled by that thing!" he screamed at Sonic, who responded with a flabbergasted look.

Meanwhile, Shadow continued his assault. He attempted to get close enough to the piping coming from the Biolizard's face, but it responded by shooting out what looked like a black orb of energy from its mouth.

"What is this?" Shadow shouted to himself as he jumped over the orb. He watched the orb zoom past him and explode against a wall. He turned back towards the Biolizard but had to hit the ground to avoid getting hit by another orb. It tried shooting one more orb at him, but it didn't appear to have the energy to. Smoke started to come out of its mouth as if it were tired and coughing. Shadow jumped back up and quickly got back atop the piping and used it to get another punch in at the Biolizard's sore.

The Biolizard reacted to this blow similarly to how it reacted the first time. Its body leapt up in reaction to the pain, once again flinging Shadow to the bridge before he could inflict any more damage. Starting to get infuriated, the Biolizard then began firing more black orbs at Shadow, but at a higher quantity and a faster rate. The orbs were too easy for Shadow to dodge, however, and he made his way back towards the piping along prototype's side. He rode up the piping and again gave the sore a whack, leaving the Biolizard reeling in pain and causing himself to be thrown back to the bridge. Seeing that this strategy wasn't working, the Biolizard decided to summon smaller pink orbs which came from the side of its body. They began to hover around the Biolizard and would throw themselves toward Shadow if he tried to made his way back to the Biolizard's mouth.

"Wow, this prototype sure means business," Knuckles said, now at the base of the shrine.

Sonic, who had already been halfway up the stairs, called back, "Will you stop getting distracted and get up here?"

Shadow found out that dodging these smaller orbs proved to be much more of a hassle than the larger ones. Not only were there more of the smaller orbs, but they moved faster and homed in towards him, unlike the slower, larger orbs that only moved in one direction. After spinning around to avoid a few of the orbs, Shadow leapt up and felt another one graze against his shoe, knocking him to the ground, where he had to start rolling on his side to avoid getting hit.

"Now what do I do?" Shadow grunted to himself. He got up, only to nearly slip on a non-functioning pink orb which had just been lying idly on the ground next to him. That's when it hit him: "These orbs don't explode!"

He looked up and saw another wave of orbs coming his way. He jumped up and on top of the closest one to him and immediately jumped off of that one and to another orb. He effectively used the orbs as stairs to get himself closer to the prototype's sore. Once he saw an opening, Shadow dove for the sore and gave it another punch.

The Biolizard flinched more and roared in pain more loudly than it ever had previously. Shadow again was thrown from its body, but having expected it this time, was able to land on his feet. He prepped himself to deliver the final blow to the beaten prototype, but it had one more trick up its sleeve.

Sonic and Knuckles by that time had already made their way to the top of the shrine. There was a blinking red symbol in the middle of the floor there. Knuckles took out the Master Emerald and moved to place it on the symbol.

Just then, however, the Biolizard unleashed its final attempt at defense. With a roar, more pink orbs came from its body, but that wasn't all. Shadow started to feel as light as a feather, and before he knew it, he was floating. Somehow, the Biolizard was able to alter the gravity in the room.

As this was happening, Knuckles was still fumbling around with the Master Emerald. He panicked as it nearly eluded its grasp as the gravity started to shift, but he was just able to grab ahold of it. He turned to where Sonic was and saw that he had taken hold of one of the shrine's pillars to avoid from being taken to the room's ceiling. He pushed his way towards him and grabbed Sonic's outreached hand as they both hung on for dear life.

Shadow, on the other hand, did not have the luxury of being able to grab onto anything and was pressed with the task of taking out the Biolizard right then and there if he wanted to survive. He swam his way towards the prototype's sore, spinning and rolling in the air as necessary to elude the waves of pink orbs that were thrown in his way. But he couldn't move fast enough. There were too many orbs to avoid and he didn't have the speed to do so. He was able to make his way past a few orbs but was hit in the chest by another one, pushing him back a good distance away from his target. He tried again, flailing his arms and legs as fast as possible, but again he was knocked away by an orb before he was able to get close enough.

He grunted in frustration. There was no way he could get close enough to deliver the final blow. He waited as a few more orbs came his way. He dodged them all, but did not dare to get closer. He took another glance at his surroundings. What was he missing? There had to be some way around all of this.

Just then, an orb came whizzing past him over his head and in the direction of the prototype. He remembered: these orbs don't explode. He turned around and saw a few of the orbs that he had previously dodged. One of them came flying directly towards him. Instead of completely dodging it, he leapt up and grabbed ahold of it. He now was hitching a ride on the orb straight at the Biolizard's sore. He waited until he was close enough and so that there weren't any other orbs that would block his path. Then he took the final leap and smashed into the sore full-force with his entire body.

The hulking lizard creature turned its neck up screaming in excruciating pain once again. This time, though, when it brought itself back down, it stayed down. It was defeated.

The Biolizard's defeat restored the normal gravity inside the core. An exhausted Shadow began to make his way towards the shrine where Sonic and Knuckles were on the ground again. The echidna was already restarting the process of harnessing the Master Emerald's powers.

"Okay, let's try this again," Knuckles said as he placed the Emerald on the flashing red symbol in the middle of the shrine's floor. He began to recite the prayer that had been passed down to him from generations before.

"The servers are the seven Chaos. Chaos is power, power is enriched by the heart. The controller is the one that unifies the Chaos.

"The Chaos Emeralds must be stopped! Only you can do this!"

The Emerald began to spin at a remarkable speed. Once again, the energy produced by this action caused bolts of electricity to be summoned around them, which culminated in a bright light engulfing the room.

Shadow had just made his way up the stairs of the shrine when the bright light had been emitted, but he had to stop and turn around when he heard another roar. The Biolizard wasn't quite through yet. Roaring now with more of a viciousness than ever before, the Biolizard curled its neck upwards and soon began to stand on its high legs. It too began to be engulfed in a bright light and soon after that it had disappeared.

"Shadow, I thought you had taken it out!" Sonic yelled.

"I did too," he responded quietly.

"Well, it's probably gone now, right?" Knuckles asked. "And we just stopped the Chaos Emeralds. So we probably don't have anything to worry about."

Then the three started to feel more vibrations coming from under them. These vibrations, however, were much stronger than the ones they had experienced previously and they were strong enough to knock the three to the ground.

Once the vibrations had ceased, Knuckles remarked, "Okay, now I'm confused. We take out the prototype and stop the Chaos Emeralds, but we're _still_ set to crash into the Earth?"

"The prototype is still alive," said Robotnik's voice from Sonic's walkie-talkie. Sonic and Knuckles let out a groan. Shadow's expression had not changed. The doctor continued, "I'm not sure how to explain this…it's as if it and the colony have become one. It's literally pulling the colony towards the Earth!"

"It must have been Chaos Control," Shadow murmured to himself. "That's how it got here and now that's how it got outside."

Knuckles smacked his palm against his face. "Well, I'm all of ideas," he said. "Do you two have a plan B?"

Sonic examined his surroundings. What did they have there that they could use? "Chaos Emeralds," he said. "Chaos Emeralds!"

"What about Chaos Emeralds?" asked Shadow.

"We have seven Chaos Emeralds upstairs," Sonic said. "Shadow, please tell me you can turn super."

"Turn super?" Shadow asked, having clearly never heard of the phrase before.

"We can turn all super," Sonic said to the other two. "And we can get outside and take care of the prototype once and for all!"

"Okay, but there's only one problem," Knuckles pointed out. "Do we have time to get upstairs, fetch the Chaos Emeralds, turn super, and then take down the prototype?"

Having forgotten that time was an issue, Sonic pulled out his walkie-talkie and asked Robotnik, "Doc, how much time 'til impact?"

"About five minutes," he answered. "Hurry up!"

"Darn!" Sonic screamed, almost throwing his walkie-talkie to the ground, but deciding not to let go of it. He looked as frustrated as ever. "I guess we have to time to lose, then, guys."

Seeing that this was their only way, the three attempted to make their way down the shrine and back to the central control room before yet again, another flash of light brightened up the room.

"Now what?" Sonic shouted. They looked up at the light. It was unbelievable. Glimmering from the light and zooming towards them were the seven Chaos Emeralds. They had made their way towards them, almost as if they had known they were needed.

"Well, would you look at that," Knuckles remarked.

All seven of the Emeralds took flight and surrounded the three of them. They started spinning in a circle, slowly gaining speed. The three reached their hands up towards them, believing that this would aid them in harnessing their power. In a vibrant flash of light, they could feel the energy rushing through their veins. Their fur turned upwards and began to shine golden. Even the colors of their eyes began to change. Shadow marveled at this feeling. He felt a billion times stronger and unstoppable.

Breaking up this triumphant moment was Knuckles who said, "Well…this is awkward." Sonic and Shadow looked towards him. He hadn't turned super.

"What happened?" Sonic asked. "Do we need to try again?"

"No, just go," Knuckles said, and not enviously like Sonic and Shadow might have expected. "These things have minds of their own, this must have happened for a reason. You two are clearly the ones that need to take this thing down, not me. Just go!"

As much as they would have wanted to reflect upon what had just happened, Super Sonic and Super Shadow knew they couldn't afford another moment of hesitation. They nodded to one another, looked skywards and disappeared to outer space where their destinies awaited them.


	22. Chapter 21: The Fall of the Ultimate

_Chapter 21: The Fall of the Ultimate_

Sonic thought he had seen it all. He had saved the world on countless occasions, encountering the most grotesque of monsters and the most menacing of mechs hell-bent on bringing about his demise in the most violent of ways. But nothing would prepare him for what he was about to see outside of the colony.

The Biolizard and the Space Colony ARK had become conjoined. The prototype's posterior half had disappeared. The rest of the body had fused with the Eclipse Cannon. Although Sonic believed that the Biolizard was hideous when he had first encountered it, the prototype's new form only furthered his feelings of disgust while evoking new emotions of anger and desperation. This was what Gerald Robotnik felt was necessary to destroy the planet. This horrifying image told the entire story of Professor Gerald's rage – and Sonic was out to try to protect the people who brought about the rage in him.

However, Sonic knew that this moral debate would have to come another day, assuming there would be other days to look forward to. On the other hand, Shadow couldn't ignore these same things, and it was becoming apparent. Gerald Robotnik, his creator and master, had the pieces to the puzzle of world destruction ready to be put together. What had been weighing so heavily on the black hedgehog these last few moments was that Shadow himself was the one who had put the pieces together. If he and Sonic were to fail, billions of innocent lives would be lost due to his actions.

The two hedgehogs in their Super forms had the ability to zoom across outer space in spite of the lack of gravity, and they quickly rocketed in the direction of the Biolizard for their final fight. "You doing all right, Shadow?" Sonic asked, having looked over to his companion and seeing the anguish on his face. "This is a big risk we're taking, and I'd rather not have you go if you don't want—"

"I'M GOING!" Shadow snapped, his voice almost growling and causing Sonic to flinch with fright. "I'm going, I'm going…" he repeated to himself softly and in between pants, making sure not to make eye contact with Sonic.

Sonic, not wanting to push Shadow any further, took the lead in their flight towards the prototype. "Shadow, you hang back and collect rings! I'll try to quickly scope out a weak point!" he called out. He proceeded without waiting for Shadow's response although it didn't matter as Shadow did not give one. He had simply turned and followed instructions to find rings.

Sonic blasted towards the Biolizard, hoping to get a closer look at it. But the prototype saw him too, and it quickly prepared defenses. It summoned more of the small pink orbs that it had attempted to take out Shadow with and fired them at Sonic. As Sonic dodged these lightning-quick orbs, the prototype began to fire lasers of a bright light blue at him from the circular metal bulge connected to its back. Jaw dropped and all, Sonic bailed on his attempt to get closer and nose-dived away from all of the orbs and lasers, feeling the some of the heat of a laser that had just whizzed by him.

Once he had gotten a safe enough distance away, he asked himself with frustration, "How can I even expect to get close to that thing?"

"Sonic! Shadow!" called out a voice coming from an old and clunky PA system directed to the ARK's surroundings. It belonged to Dr. Robotnik. His speech was rushed and anxious. "The apparatus that you see wrapped around the prototype is its life support system, but it seems to be heavily damaged. The bad news is there must be some kind of last resort sequence that is programmed with it that's causing all of these defense mechanisms to appear."

"Then what in the world are we supposed to do?" Sonic screamed, not caring that he wouldn't be heard.

"The fact, however, that the life support system is heavily damaged, can be used to your advantage!" the doctor exclaimed while still speaking at the speed of a fired bullet. "The prototype seems to be forming areas of red swelling all along its exterior. That seems to be the only way it can be damaged!"

Now finding a moment to smile, Sonic confidently said to himself, "Well, now I know what I'm doing. I've just gotta go and do it—"

He was interrupted by a mere aura of gold shooting past him – right into the teeth of the Biolizard's defense. Shadow had been listening to the doctor's words of advice as well and appeared to be dead set on reaching the prototype and blasting it to pieces. The prototype had established its orb's defenses in a sphere-like formation surrounding it. There had to be hundreds of the orbs. Every second or so, a set of orbs would break from the formation and home in on Shadow, trying to knock him off course. He dodged one wave of orbs, and then another. A third came and missed him too. But then the lasers came back into play. As he got only about halfway past the Biolizard's defenses, Shadow took a laser to the chest, which throttled him backwards as if he had gotten smashed by a huge metal pipe. The shot spun Shadow head over legs and left him lying limply in the middle of space.

Witnessing all of this from the side was Sonic. After he had seen Shadow took the brutal blow, his heart sank. He zoomed out towards him, hoping and praying to himself that the blow had not been fatal. But Shadow gave him an answer before he could check for himself. Shadow had propped himself upright just as Sonic approached.

"Shadow!" Sonic screamed with relief. "I'm glad you're okay, I thought you were a goner."

Looking at Sonic, and then taking a quick look back at the Biolizard, Shadow then proceeded to berate Sonic through clenched teeth. "What were you coming back for me for?" he shouted, eliciting more fearful responses from Sonic, who clearly had only wanted to help. "You fool, I left its defenses wide open! That was your chance to swoop in!"

Sonic then took a look at the prototype himself. In that fleeting moment of compassion for Shadow, he hadn't noticed at all that he indeed had a golden opportunity to sneak past the Biolizard's defenses and lay in an uncontested shot. Now, the prototype's defenses were up once again.

"You're right, you're right," Sonic stammered. "I'm sorry, I should've figured—"

"Ugh, no time anymore!" Shadow said while struggling to compose himself. "Let's go! I'm going in one more time, this time, you follow when the coast is clear, got it?" He was noticeably trembling as he said this, and his eyes started to twitch. Sonic could see clearly that something was awry, although it didn't seem as if Shadow was in pain.

"Shadow, you don't look okay, are you sure—"

"Don't–worry–about–ME!" Shadow interrupted, his voice becoming more and more animal-like with each word.

And with that, Shadow zoomed off again past Sonic, and straight towards the prototype's defenses. The small pink orbs were again set in their sphere-like formation surrounding the Biolizard before waves of three of them rained down on Shadow. Sonic watched as the first, second, and third waves were avoided with mere turns to the side. The fourth and fifth waves came closer, however, as did the sixth and seventh waves. Then, on the eighth wave, Shadow was forced to stop in mid-flight to avoid the orbs that would have struck him from above.

He was left completely exposed. Another bright blue laser shot out from the Biolizard's life support system and swept from side to side like a baseball bat, smashing Shadow out of Sonic's sight.

Sonic had to ignore his sympathetic instincts to go after Shadow. Shadow had just absorbed a tremendous hit, and although they were in their Super forms, Sonic had no idea how much Shadow could take. He hoped to himself that he was okay and turned towards the prototype. Just like Shadow wanted, the defenses were wide open.

"Time to do what I do best," Sonic said with an uncharacteristic tone of seriousness.

He rocketed towards the Biolizard at what had to be the speed of light. He had been well out of range of the Biolizard's defenses to begin with, but whatever space lay between them was dwindling quickly. The "red swelling" was what he needed to be looking for, but he couldn't quite see it. What was remaining of the pink orbs began to be fired at him, but they were missing by plenty. It would take some time – more than enough time – for the laser to be ready to be fired again. But where was the swelling? Sonic looked towards its head, not there. He had to scan quickly from its anterior end to its posterior end otherwise he would overshoot the prototype altogether with how fast he was going.

"Not there, not there, not there," Sonic shouted to himself as he approached. He was going to either find it or bail out, not wanting to risk colliding with the prototype headlong and risking harm in that way. "Not there, not there, not there, THERE!" He located the swelling just in time, having to veer to his right to smash it. Given the speed with which he was traveling, the one hit was enough to take down the Biolizard for good as it let out one final screech before succumbing to its wounds.

The elasticity of the Biolizard's swelling shot Sonic back some distance away from the falling colony and he was able to get a good glimpse of where it was in relation to the Earth. It was getting closer. And it wasn't stopping, which was worrying him. The Biolizard was defeated. So what else was there to do?

"Sonic." Said a voice from behind the hedgehog. It was a ragged and fatigued Super Shadow. It had appeared the effort just to get him to Sonic's location was killing him. "There's still one more thing we have to do."

Sonic, flummoxed by Shadow's determination replied, "We? Are you still up for more of this?"

"Trust me, it requires the both of us." Shadow said. And this was true. But what he had in mind was not going to end entirely well, and he knew it.

He flew off now towards the direction of Earth and Sonic followed.

* * *

"What are they doing now?" Rouge asked Robotnik from inside the ARK.

The doctor, along with Rouge, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, watched on from the ARK's observatory at the two zooming golden auras. "It appears as though they're trying to race the ARK. They're trying to get in front of it."

All five of them, including the doctor himself, paused at the thought of this, wondering what it could mean.

"…It wouldn't be too much for them to push this thing back into orbit, right?" Knuckles asked.

* * *

Sonic and Shadow had put themselves in the path of the colony, between it and the Earth. After racing out so that there was a comfortable enough distance between them and the ARK, Shadow then abruptly turned around and began to fly _towards_ the ARK, much to Sonic's shock.

"You sure you know what you're doing, Shadow?" Sonic screamed as he shot after Shadow. He wasn't fearful – he's never fearful – but the fact that he knew nothing of Shadow's plan left him uncertain, which was most definitely new for him.

"I do, Sonic, I do!" Shadow said to Sonic when the blue hedgehog had caught up with him. "It will take perfect timing and a strong sense of will, but we should be able to bring the ARK back into orbit!"

"What are you talking about?" Sonic screamed again, his screams now bordering on fearful. "If we run into that thing, it'll crush us!"

"We won't be running into it, Sonic." Shadow said, keeping his eyes fixated on the incoming ARK. "We'll be using Chaos Control." Bags under his eyes and dead tired, Shadow asked Sonic, "Do you know what would happen if two were to use Chaos Control at the same time?"

"Shadow, I barely know anything about 'normal' Chaos Control," Sonic answered. The ARK was getting closer and closer.

"Professor Gerald once told me about such a scenario. It was only a dream at the time. I didn't know anybody else that could harness the power of Chaos Control…but now I do. Chaos Control is supposed to distort time and space for its one user. But if there are two users, the systems and the surroundings both become distorted."

This got Sonic thinking. "So in other words, if we time this right, we'll be able to teleport the entire colony back into orbit where it should be?"

"In theory? Yes." Shadow replied.

Sonic chuckled. "Well that's good enough for me."

There was, of course, a lot that Shadow was leaving out of this theory. For anything else to be moved, much less anything the size of an entire space colony moving at its current rate, a great deal of power from the Chaos Control users needed to be expended. _Give them a chance to be happy_ was what Maria said. It was decided then that Sonic would be the first that Shadow would give that chance.

The weight of it all was becoming almost too much to bear for Shadow. This was the pain the Sonic had been witnessing in Shadow, although Sonic had no clue what it actually was. The fact that he was taking on lasers from the Biolizard wasn't nearly what was causing it. It was this promise. A fifty-year old promise that, ironically, he had been trying to undermine over the last few days. But, in the end, Shadow knew that in order to have peace with himself, the promise needed to be fulfilled. He just wasn't sure of the cost it might take to do so.

Much like he did at the ARK many years ago, Shadow took off his golden bracelets, letting them float off into space – an act not unnoticed by Sonic, who caught one of them. He stared straight up at the approaching ARK. It was getting to the point where it was beginning to enter into the atmosphere. Tears began to freely stream down his face. Emotion had fully taken over. He was going to end it all, right here.

"Are you ready, Sonic?" he asked. "It's time."

"Okay, Shadow, here we go!" Sonic yelled back.

"On three: One, two, three!"

"CHAOS CONTROL!" they both yelled.

It was a sensation that neither of the two, nor the five inside the colony itself had ever come close to feeling before. It was as if their bodies were being stretched, cut into pieces, and turned inside out all at once. The colony had been surrounded by a ball of golden light, not unlike the hues that Sonic and Shadow's Super forms gave off. It expanded and contracted multiple times within that ball of light before finally disintegrating and reappearing miles away back in orbit where it was supposed to be.

Another job well done by Sonic, who had saved the world again and found himself on one of the ARK's exterior runways no longer in Super form. He looked to his right hand. He was grasping Shadow's golden bracelet. "Wait…Shadow? Shadow?" Sonic yelled out. He was nowhere to be found. He ran to the railed-off edge of the runway, hoping to find a glimpse of him. The only thing he was able to make off in the distance: a small golden figure descending into a pink light towards Earth. Sonic knew it was him. And now it was Sonic's turn to be in tears.

* * *

The other five saviors of the world in the ARK had seen everything that Sonic had seen, from the Chaos Control teleportation of the entire space colony to Shadow's fall. Now, they were just waiting for the blue blur himself to return, if at all.

"He's okay, I know he's okay," Amy muttered, seated next to Tails with her head leaning on his shoulder. "He should've been dead a long time ago, I'm telling you, he wouldn't do this to us."

Robotnik continued to stare out of the observatory's window and Rouge leaned on the projection device with a blank look. Knuckles, who had been out of the room searching for Sonic, returned.

"He's coming," Knuckles said, having seen the blue hedgehog trudging his way into the space colony. Tails and Amy both stood up, Amy adding a small squeal of delight, but even the arrival of Sonic wasn't brightening the mood a whole lot. Robotnik still wasn't moving from the window, nor was Rouge from her spot at the projection device.

Sonic finally walked into the observation room. He was no longer crying, although his eyes were puffy and his face was long, making it obvious that he had been. Amy immediately ran up to him and gave him a warm, tight hug, which Sonic only half reciprocated. His mind was clearly elsewhere.

"It's not true, is it?" Rouge asked, with Knuckles shooting her a look of disapproval – even he had recognized that would be an awful question to ask so soon.

However, Sonic didn't seem to mind the question at all, answering, "It's true," causing the bat to break down in tears that she had been holding in for so long. Sonic walked up to her and placed his arm around her shoulder as a consolatory gesture. He then pushed Shadow's golden bracelet into her grasp. "I think he would have wanted you to have this," he told her with half a smile.

Now nearby the window, Sonic decided to take a look out of it. He saw the planet he risked so much to save – the planet that Shadow died saving. "It's as cool and blue as me, you know?" he said, bringing smiles to everyone's faces, including the doctor's. Robotnik was standing next to Sonic, still looking out the window.

Sonic thought a little longer about Earth. He'd be down there munching on chili dogs again before he knew it. Another ceremony would probably be held in his honor. He chuckled to himself at the thought of the President handing him a key to the universe. He probably earned it for saving the world even with all that the government had put him through.

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'd sure like to get back down there," Sonic finally said, turning around towards the rest, trying to sound upbeat. He was struggling to be positive even though he had just saved the world again; he conceded silently to himself that every other time he did never came with this kind of personal loss. "So, uh, shall we? I know we've got a rocket ship and all." Tails and Amy, and Knuckles and Rouge nodded and filed out the door together, all agreeing that their homes on Earth would be the best places to be right at that moment. Sonic took a few steps to follow them before he realized that Robotnik wasn't coming. He was still standing at the window "Are you all right, doc?" he asked.

Robotnik didn't respond at all for a moment, then turned around, exposing his face. There was something about his face that was unsettling to Sonic. He didn't seem excited about the world being saved, nor did he seem upset about loss of Shadow. He looked ready to move on. Moving on for the doctor, however, as Sonic knew well, never ends up well for the world. He walked by Sonic and said nothing, filing out the door with the rest of them.

At the very least, though, they were able to fight another day. And for that, Sonic could forever be thankful. He had never really thought to respect Shadow the Hedgehog until now. Shadow not only looked like him, but Shadow could do anything he could. He even had the heart and the determination, and the willingness for self-sacrifice that only true heroes like Sonic show. For that, Sonic would always have a place in his heart for Shadow. "Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog," he said, taking one last glance out the window towards Earth, paying his final respects.


	23. Epilogue: The Recovery

_Epilogue: The Recovery_

The wind kicking up sand seemed to be the only action in the desert, but Dr. Robotnik was out to prove otherwise. To the doctor, nothing about Shadow's "death" made sense. He had seen it himself. Shadow disappeared into a pink light as he descended down upon Earth. But nothing scientifically suggests that should have been the case.

Much of what had occurred in those fateful final hours defied logic. The doctor swore to himself with the thought of this, suddenly wishing he had more time to research the Chaos Emeralds when he had them all in one place. Obviously, he knew about the mystical qualities associated with the Emeralds. But there were a lot of things in terms of the mysticism that he was missing. He was in the process of digging up whatever he could for research, with documents dating back to thousands of years ago, things that modern historians may have just chalked up to myth rather than reality. The Chaos Emeralds had changed the course of history, according to ancient peoples. It might have sounded ridiculous. But how many times had he witnessed it himself? Two hedgehogs had just used the power of the Chaos Emeralds to save the world from ruin.

Robotnik knew he was counting his chickens before they were hatched, but he needed something to look forward to. He was right back where he started from when he first decided to break into Prison Island: on the run and without resources. He had no quick way to get back to the top. But he knew where to start for the long way. And he knew to start right away.

Seated in his Egg Mobile, the doctor scanned the desert, taking a look back at his radar every so often. He had made a mark on his GPS, having calculated approximately where he needed to go, and he wasn't too far.

Again the doctor had assisted in saving the world, and again his efforts went ignored. He didn't feel nearly as bad about not receiving any credit this time around, however. He supposed people weren't going to forgive him for giving them a 24-hour ultimatum on their livelihoods. It wasn't even the fact that Sonic and his pals were going to get another ceremony. It was the fact that Sonic had convinced the public that Shadow had never been up to any willful wrongdoing at all – that he was pure at heart. Robotnik saw what Shadow was capable of, what lengths he went through to achieve what he wanted, and what lengths we went through to keep his true agenda a secret. He wouldn't have been surprised if the ever-trusting Sonic had been fooled by the black hedgehog.

Turning his attention back to the GPS screen, the doctor saw that he was close. He then looked forward in his Walker. He squinted, trying to get a good look past the sand sweeping sideways in front of him. Something lying on the ground up ahead caught his eye. The doctor found what he was looking for.

Shadow the Hedgehog wasn't dead at all. And the doctor had him on his side again.


End file.
